Surgical management of the radiologically identified but nonpalpable pulmonary lesion

A solitary intrapulmonary nodule may, on rare occasions, be of the same consistency as the pulmonary tissue and therefore not be palpable by the surgeon at operation nor by the pathologist in the removed specimen. The importance of routine preoperative anatomic localization of such lesions is obvious. In a series of four patients, resection of the lobe containing the nodule was possible and the lesions were identified after meticulous serial sectioning of the excised lung parenchyma. Two of the lesions proved to be carcinoid bronchial tumors and two others were alveolar cell carcinoma.