Life Without Adrenals

Before the days of miracle drugs a man could not have lived more than a few weeks after surgical removal of his adrenals (the endocrine glands which lie astride the kidneys). Last week the amphitheater at Boston's Peter Bent Brigham Hospital was'crowded with standees as Dr. George W. Thorn described cases in which patients have lived as long as nine months after removal of the adrenals and are still going strong.

In every case, the reason for the operation was arterial damage with high blood pressure of so malignant a type that the patients faced early death. It was believed that excessive production of some of the hormones secreted by the adrenals was involved. The secretion of these hormones could be stopped by removing the adrenals, but the trick was to do this without killing the patient.

Dr. Thorn described twelve cases in which the operation had been performed. Four cases had died; eight others had been kept alive by the administration of de-soxycorticosterone and cortisone, given in place of adrenal hormones. One patient went ice fishing in New Hampshire a few weeks after the operation; his only complaint was that he got uncomfortably cold, which was to be expected because the body's conversion of food into heat depends, in part, on the activity of the adrenal glands.

Another, William Considine, 32, had been given six months to live. He had a roaring in the head which made it impossible for him to work. He had the operation nine months ago, responded so well that he got a job as a night orderly at Peter Bent Brigham. Considine takes a cortisone tablet twice a day and gets a daily injection of desoxycorticosterone. It is too early to say what success the technique may have in treating extreme high blood pressure, and Dr. Thorn was bending over backward to be conservative in his report. But four of the patients surviving without adrenals had shown a marked drop in blood pressure. In all eight cases, the enlarged, overburdened hearts had been reduced in size. And the maintenance of life by artificial hormones after removal of the vital adrenal glands was exciting medical news.

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