Lesion Indicator

From a clear-minded Cleveland diagnostician, Dr. Edward Elbert Woldman, 41, last week came a simple method of detecting gastrointestinal lesions in from two to six hours. He dissolves a pinch of the common cathartic, phenolphthalein, in a third of an ounce of alcohol, dilutes it with two-thirds of an ounce of water, has the patient drink the mixture on an empty stomach. If the mucous lining of the intestinal tract is in the least eroded, the phenolphthalein quickly seeps into the blood stream.* The harmlessly adulterated blood in due course swishes through the kidneys, leaving a residue of phenolphthalein to trickle into the bladder with the urine. Phenolphthalein turns pink when mixed with an alkaline substance like sodium hydroxide. So when Dr. Woldman drops sodium hydroxide into an ulcerated or cancerous individual's urine, the urine turns an indicative pink. For patients too sick for roentgenological study, or in cases where X-ray cannot distinguish between old lesion scars and new lesions, Dr. Woldman's technique is valuable.

Having devised this simple indicator of lesions within the digestive tract, Dr. Woldman at present is trying to devise a measure of the lesion's size. Wrote he: "There is some evidence that the quantity of phenolphthalein excreted may have a relation to the size of the lesion."

* The phenolphthalein would, of course, penetrate any lesion in the mucosa. To test for intestinal lesion a patient who had a carcinoma of the mouth, Dr. Woldman piped the drug by that lesion through a straw.

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