Why Don't We Biopsy All Lung Nodules?

Transcript

Why don’t we biopsy every lung nodule that we find? Well, it’s because biopsying lung nodules is tricky.

Again, depending on the size of the lung nodule, the characteristics of it, how solid it is and where it’s located in the chest, some lung nodules are more or less amenable to biopsy. So reasons your doctor may not recommend a biopsy would be a very small size, difficult to access location, the integrity of the surrounding lung that would need to be traversed with the needle.

Also, there are some lung nodules that we feel fairly confident are concerning enough based on their radiographic features that regardless of what a biopsy says, or doesn’t say, we feel that those should come out.

Key Takeaways

1. We don’t biopsy every lung nodule we find because biopsying lung nodules is tricky and depends on many factors.

2. Your doctor may not recommend a biopsy because it’s too small, hard to access, or if it could damage the integrity of the surrounding lung.

3. There are also some lung nodules that should come out based on their radiographic features, regardless of what a biopsy says.