Abstract
Background: With a drive towards early diagnosis of lung cancer and aim for curative treatment, CT guided biopsy is being used increasingly. While it is a relatively safe procedure, institutions performing this should audit its practice against recommended standards.
Objective: Measuring this procedure's complication rate and positive results to ascertain if there are any predictors for these outcomes.
Method: A retrospective study was undertaken to collect data for all CT guided biopsies done in last 2 years (2009-10) in our hospital.
Result: 66 biopsies were reviewed. Mean (SD) age of patients was 69 (11) years. Conclusive histology was obtained in 38 (56%). Complication rate and the British Thoracic Society (BTS) standards are shown below.
Table 1
The mean size and depth from chest wall of lesions in patients with and without PTX, hemorrhage and conclusive biopsies are shown in Table 2.
Table 2
In lesions with a size of >3cm (n=43), 31 (72%) results were conclusive as opposed to 8 (35%) conclusive results in lesions <3cm (n=23). Positive results for lesions at a depth of >1.5 cm (n=13) was 46% while the same for lesions at depth <1.5 cm (n=53) was 61%.
Conclusion: Good pick up rate with complications well within acceptable standards were achieved in our study population. Depth of the lesion correlated well with pneumothorax and hemorrhage while size correlated with pneumothorax. Size was also a good predictors of conclusive biopsies.
- © 2011 ERS
