Upper abdominal computerized tomography scanning in staging non-small cell lung carcinoma

During preoperative staging the authors performed upper abdominal computed tomographic (CT) scanning in 38 patients with non-small cell lung carcinoma. Five of the 38 patients had occult adrenal metastases based on CT images. Two of these five patients, who would otherwise have been surgical candidates for definitive thoracotomy, underwent percutaneous fine-needle aspiration cytology of the suspected adrenal metastases. Cytology results in both cases were positive for metastatic carcinoma, thereby precluding thoracotomy. Upper abdominal CT scanning may optimize preoperative staging of selected non-small cell lung cancer patients.