Copyright ©ERS Journals Ltd 2006 Combined transbronchial needle aspiration and positron emission tomography for mediastinal staging of NSCLC1 Pulmonary Medicine, 2 Thoracic Surgery, 3 Institute of Pathology and, 4 Nuclear Medicine, University Hospital Basel, Basel, Switzerland. CORRESPONDENCE: P. N. Chhajed, Pulmonary Medicine, University Hospital Basel, Petersgraben 4, CH-4031, Basel, Switzerland. Fax: 41 612654587. E-mail: pchhajed{at}uhbs.ch Keywords: Bronchoscopy, lung cancer, mediastinoscopy, transbronchial needle aspiration
Received: October 27, 2005
There are no data available combining transbronchial needle aspiration (TBNA) of mediastinal lymph nodes and positron emission tomography (PET) in the staging of nonsmall cell lung cancer (NSCLC).
The aim of the current study was to determine if these two methods can enhance the negative predictive value of the individual modality alone, for a specific lymph node station, and if this integrated approach can reduce the number of mediastinoscopies.
A total of 113 patients with enlarged mediastinal lymph nodes (
Sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value, negative predictive value and accuracy to detect malignant lymphadenopathy was 68 (13/19), 89 (119/134), 46 (13/28), 95 (119/125) and 86% (132/152) for PET, respectively; 54% (6/11), 100 (53/53), 100 (6/6), 91 (53/58) and 92% (59/64), respectively for TBNA; and 100 (11/11), 94 (50/53), 79 (11/14), 100 (50/50) and 95 (61/64) for combined TBNA and PET, respectively.
Combination of transbronchial needle aspiration and positron emission tomography has the potential to allow adequate mediastinal staging of nonsmall cell lung cancer with enlarged lymph nodes in most patients without the need for mediastinoscopy.
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