ROENTGENOGRAPHY AND THERAPY WITH IODIZED OILS

Two proprietary iodine-oil compounds, lipiodol and iodipin, extensively used in recent years for roentgenography and therapy, are now known to produce two harmful effects which restrict their usefulness: first, because, virtually nonabsorbable, they may remain in the tissues for indefinite periods, for two years in one instance; and, second, they may cause by prolonged contact irritation and cicatrix formation.1 We have studied the therapeutic effects of these and other iodized oils after injection into the seminal ducts through vasotomy, usually bilateral, in sixty-seven men, with immediate roentgenograms in all; the viscosity of lipiodol and iodipin renders the filling of the vesicles difficult and at times incomplete (fig. 3). The failure of absorption, observed by others in various tissues, is shown in the persistence of lipiodol in the vesicles and in the connective tissue at the internal inguinal ring (Bogros' space), into which it was intentionally injected by way of