Chest wall metastasis after percutaneous fine-needle aspiration biopsy

Presented is a case of a chest wall metastasis due to tumor seeding along the needle tract from a percutaneous fine-needle aspiration biopsy (FNAB) of a lung carcinoma. At thoracostomy, the patient was found to have a chest wall lesion at the site of the FNAB that had been performed 4 months earlier. This relatively uncommon complication has been reported elsewhere, but its significance with respect to the management of lung lesions suspected to be malignant has not been defined. The authors maintain that FNAB may not be indicated in select patients. The application of this diagnostic modality should be considered individually on the basis of the patient's operative risk as well as the risk for having a primary lung carcinoma develop.