A fall that broke the ribs of Ruth Bader Ginsburg might have saved the life of a Supreme Court justice



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From Ethan Sacks

The fall that left Judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg of the Supreme Court with three fractured ribs proved to be beneficial to her health.

On Friday, doctors at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York, Ginsburg's 85-year-old left lung, managed to extract two cancerous growths. Nodules were discovered early thanks to tests on his broken ribs, wounded after the fall of November 7, according to the press office of the Supreme Court.

The procedure, a pulmonary lobectomy in which a pulmonary lobe containing the nodules is removed from the patient, has a high success rate in cases where lung cancer is detected early. The solution is to detect it before it can spread anywhere else in the body, with potentially fatal consequences.

"Unfortunately, lung cancer is usually detected at an advanced stage after the onset of symptoms, after it has spread to the lymph nodes and elsewhere." Dr. John Heymach, president of the Center for Medical Oncology Thoracic neck and neck of the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, told NBC News Friday.

"It's possible. Without knowing the details of his case, this early detection because of these broken ribs saved his life, "said Heymach.

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg arrives at a conference at Georgetown University Law Center in Washington on September 26, 2018 Alex Wong / Getty Images File

In the case of Ginsburg, lobectomy seems to have been a success and "there was no evidence of an illness Remaining ", according to a statement from the High Court.

Complicate Early detection of this type of cancer is that the lung does not usually detect pain until the tumor becomes big enough and is therefore more difficult to treat

"When the size of the tumor is sufficient, you start to cough; if it bleeds, you spit blood; if it becomes large enough to touch the chest wall, then you develop chest pain, "says Dr. Renato Martins, Medical Director in Thoracic / Cervico-Cervical Oncology at the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance.

" But until you reach the chest wall, " then a tumor can be three, four, five centimeters and it can have very few symptoms. "

According to Dr. Raja Flores, head of thoracic surgery at Mount Sinai Health System in New York," most cancers are diagnosed, in fact, when they look for something else. "

" It happens that someone comes with a stomach ache, then that he does a scan on the stomach and discovers pancreatic growth, "said Flores.

The Ginsburg's health, which was appointed to court by former President Bill Clinton in 1993, is under scrutiny at a time when President Donald Trump has already placed two judges in the US. the most powerful court in the United States.

Ginsburg, the oldest judge of the Supreme Court, had survived the colon and pancreas

However, CT scans specifically for lung cancer are usually reserved for the rare case at high risk, such as heavy smokers who have recently quit, it is therefore unlikely that Ginsburg Heymach said: "The majority of these cases are simply not identified by screening except for reasons of serendipity" , added Flores.

C e which causes fracture of the ribs to fall accidentally.

"Sometimes It takes years for the nodules to develop and spread in order to provoke symptoms," said Heymach, "but if it is detected early in most cases, it is curable."

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