Approach to lung cancer

Abstract

Aim: This study was done to study the utility of various biopsy techniques in diagnosing lung cancer and also to study the clinical/pathological and radiological features of lung cancer. Materials and Methods: This is a prospective and cross-sectional study, conducted in Apollo Main Hospital, in which confirmed cases of lung carcinoma were included in the study. These patients were admitted during 1 year from 2019 to 2020. Data such as demographics (age of the patients and sex), smoking status, histopathological type, clinical presentation, radiological features, and clinical stage of the disease were obtained. Patients had undergone one or more biopsy techniques based on clinical, radiological features decided by treating physician. Results: Thirty-one patients undergone bronchoscopy with narrow band imaging (NBI) in which findings were, 13 patients showed endobronchial growth, 7 showed extrinsic growth, no abnormal gross appearance in 11 patients, 11 were NBI negative, and 20 were NBI positive. Out of 28 bronchial wash cytology samples, 21 showed no atypical cells and 7 showed positive for atypical cells. Twenty-three patients had undergone bronchial biopsy in which 14 showed malignancy in Histopathological examination (HPE) and no evidence of malignancy in eight patients. Twenty-eight patients undergone computed tomography (CT)-guided lung biopsy, in which 27 patients tested positive for malignancy. Conclusions: The result of the study demonstrates that CT-guided lung biopsy is an effective procedure in diagnosing peripherally located lung cancer with the low rate of complications with an accuracy of 96.4%.

Keywords

• adenocarcinoma
• bronchoscopy
• computed tomography-guided biopsy