Computed Tomography Guided Fine Needle Aspiration of Lung Lesions Suspected to be Bronchogenic Carcinoma: Experience of a Tertiary Care Hospital

ABSTRACT

CT guided FNAC is a simple and safe procedure of diagnostic value in patients with lung lesionssuspected to have lung malignancy. We undertook a study on 41 patients and were able to diagnose/rule out malignancy in 85.37% of these patients, while in 14.63 % of patients the smears were nondiagnostic. Once malignancy was diagnosed in these patients, then the next most important step wasto categorize the lesions. 44% of patients had squamous cell carcinoma, 12.12 % had adenocarcinoma,9.75% had small cell carcinoma, 7.31 % had poorly differentiated carcinoma, 4.87% each hadmetastasis & tuberculosis and 2.43% had aspergillosis. Squamous cell carcinoma was the commonestsubtype in our study, which is contrary to changing trends in incidence of lung carcinoma whereadenocarcinoma has replaced squamous cell carcinoma as the commonest lung malignancy. Threeof our patients had minor complication in the form of mild pneumothorax, and it resolved in all patientswithin 24 hours.