Abstract
Introduction: Lung cancer is the most common cancer in the world, both in terms of new cases and deaths. Almost a fifth of all cancer deaths worldwide are due to lung cancers. Our aim was to evaluate the utility of endobronchial ultrasound-guided trans-bronchial needle aspiration (EBUS-TBNA) for lymph node staging in patients with lung cancer.Methods: We performed a retrospective study on a total of 427 patients who underwent EBUS-TBNA sampling from January 2020 to December 2020 and a total of 610 lymph nodes were sampled. There were 322 men (mean age: 66.3 and range: 20-87) and 105 women (mean age: 65.9 and range: 18-81).Results: Cytological diagnosis revealed that 55 patients had adenocarcinoma, 28 squamous cell carcinoma, 43 neuroendocrine tumours, 34 non-small cell carcinoma not otherwise specified, 21 metastasis from extra-thoracic malignancy, 7 atypical cells suspicious for malignancy, and 239 patients had normal or reactive lymph nodes or non-neoplastic diagnosis. The diagnostic accuracy, sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value (PPV) and negative predictive value (NPV) were 91%, 88.3%, 100%, 100% and 89.2%, respectively.Conclusion: EBUS-TBNA is a safe technique with high accuracy, sensitivity, specificity, PPV, and NPV. It is an excellent option for the diagnostic approach of patients with lymphadenopathy or intra-thoracic lesions as well as for the staging of malignancies.
Highlights
Lung cancer is the most common cancer in the world, both in terms of new cases and deaths
We performed a retrospective study based on a total of 427 patients who underwent EBUS-TBNA sampling from January 2020 to December 2020 in various institutions in Greece specialized in chest diseases
All patients underwent a clinical evaluation with a chest computed tomography (CT) scan and/or positron emission tomography/computed tomography (PET/CT) for the planning of the procedure
Summary
Lung cancer is the most common cancer in the world, both in terms of new cases and deaths. Our aim was to evaluate the utility of endobronchial ultrasound-guided trans-bronchial needle aspiration (EBUS-TBNA) for lymph node staging in patients with lung cancer. Lung cancer is the most common cancer in the world, both in terms of new cases (1.8 million) and deaths (1.6 million) per year. Endobronchial ultrasound-guided trans-bronchial needle aspiration (EBUS-TBNA) has emerged as a novel, minimally invasive procedure for the diagnosis of lymphadenopathies (mediastinal and hilar lymph nodes) and/or mediastinal masses of different etiologies, as well as for staging of pulmonary and extra-pulmonary neoplasms [2,3]. Our aim in this study was to evaluate the utility of EBUS-TBNA for lymph node staging in patients with lung cancer
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