[Endobronchial ultrasonic-guided transbronchial needle aspiration (EBUS-TBNA) for lung cancer diagnosis]

Although bronchoscopy has an important role in the diagnosis of lung cancer, more invasive procedures, such as CT-guided biopsy or surgery, are needed when transbronchial approaches fail.

We investigated the usefulness of endobronchial ultrasonic-transbronchial needle aspiration (EBUS-TBNA) for lung cancer diagnosis.

We retrospectively evaluated 122 cases who were finally diagnosed to have lung cancer from among 388 cases who underwent bronchoscopy because of abnormal shadows on their chest X-ray or CT. When bronchoscopic approaches were possible, conventional transbronchial lung biopsy or cytology (conventional approaches) were done. EBUS-TBNA was added whenever mediastinal or hilar lymph nodes enlarged to more than 1 cm in diameter, or if there were lesions attached to the lower respiratory tract. The diagnostic accuracy of conventional approaches and EBUS-TBNA were assessed.

The number of cases diagnosed as lung cancer by conventional approaches was 79 cases (64.8%) among the 122 cases examined. Of the 43 cases undiagnosed by these procedures, 27 cases were diagnosed as lung cancer by EBUS-TBNA. Thus, 106 cases (86.9%) were diagnosed as lung cancer using conventional approaches plus EBUS-TBNA. No severe complications were observed in all the subjects.

EBUS-TBNA is a safe and useful approach for the diagnosis of lung cancer together with staging.