AT CHEST 2017
TORONTO (FRONTLINE MEDICAL NEWS) – Ultrathin bronchoscopy plus radial endobronchial ultrasound is not a great method for determining whether a suspicious lesion is cancerous or benign, suggests new research.
In this study of patients with CT-detected solid lung lesions, the researchers were able to make a diagnosis for only 49% of those whose nodules were evaluated using ultrathin bronchoscopy plus radial endobronchial ultrasound (EBUS).
“You have a 50/50 chance” of making a diagnosis using an ultrathin bronchoscope plus radial EBUS, said Nichole T. Tanner, MD , at the CHEST annual meeting. “I think you need to be thoughtful about how you use this technology,” said Dr. Tanner, a pulmonologist and critical care medicine physician at the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston.
“When you do CT-guided biopsies of lung lesions, the [diagnostic] yield is about 94%. So do the math” by comparing it to the roughly 50% yield from ultrathin bronchoscopy plus radial EBUS to decide whether the latter procedure is worth doing, she noted.
The study Dr. Tanner and her associates designed compared the diagnostic yield of ultrathin bronchoscopy plus radial EBUS with standard bronchoscopy and fluoroscopy in patients with CT-detected solid lung lesions 1.5-5.0 cm in size. It ran at five U.S. centers and randomized 221 patients: 85 evaluable patients were tested using the standard methods, and 112 evaluable patients were tested using ultrathin bronchoscopy plus radial EBUS. Patients averaged 65-68 years of age and were divided evenly between women and men. Their lesions averaged slightly more than 3 cm. The ultrathin device had a 4 mm wide diameter and had a 2 mm working channel.
The diagnostic yield was 38% among patients who underwent standard bronchoscopy and fluoroscopy, and 49% among those biopsied using ultrathin bronchoscopy and radial EBUS, Dr. Tanner reported . The between-group difference in yield fell short of being statistically significant.
Forty-six of the 53 patients who were not diagnosable using standard bronchoscopy and fluoroscopy crossed over to the investigational method, which produced a diagnosis for an additional seven patients (15% of the biopsied crossover patients).
The results showed that standard bronchoscopy plus fluoroscopy is “very poor” for distinguishing cancerous and benign pulmonary lesions, Dr. Tanner concluded. The yield from ultrathin bronchoscopy plus radial EBUS in her study was similar to the diagnostic yields reported in prior studies of guided bronchoscopy, even when also using radial EBUS, she added.
Given the limitations of ultrathin bronchoscopy plus radial EBUS, Dr. Tanner suggested that the best scenario for using this diagnostic method would be in patients who need a linear EBUS procedure for mediastinal lymph node staging. Such staging often requires a biopsy of the primary tumor to make a cancer diagnosis, and in such cases, “while you’re in the neighborhood, you could do bronchoscopy with an ultrathin scope,” she suggested.
The potential also exists to augment the diagnostic yield of ultrathin bronchoscopy by applying a navigational software platform and needle biopsy, two methods not included in the study, Dr. Tanner noted. “More studies should be done using this combination,” she said.
The study was funded by Olympus. Dr. Tanner has been a consultant to and has received research funding from Olympus. She has also been a consultant to Cook Medical, Integrated Diagnostics, Oncocyte, Veracyte, and Veran Medical Technologies, and she has also received research funding from Cook, Integrated Diagnostics, Oncocyte, Oncimmune, and Veracyte.
On Twitter @mitchelzoler
