Oct. 15, 2019

As detailed in an article published on Mayo Clinic's Medical Professionals website and featured in Pulmonary Physician Update e-Edition in April 2019, peripheral pulmonary nodules remain a difficult problem for chest physicians.

Mayo Clinic continues to assess a variety of techniques to allow for safer bronchoscopic sampling of lung nodules and masses to allow diagnostic yields approaching that of CT-guided biopsy (90% yield) without the inherent risks of a pneumothorax associated with CT-guided lung biopsy, which is often reported at about 15%.

Specialists at Mayo Clinic's campuses in Rochester, Minnesota, and Jacksonville, Florida, have joined teams from five other medical centers to conduct a multicenter trial, enrolling 300 patients to prospectively evaluate the use of the Intuitive Ion robotic bronchoscopy system.

"The trial will assess the ability of this novel navigation system in terms of precision and accuracy for the ability to navigate and successfully biopsy peripheral lung nodules between 1 and 3 cm in size," says Janani S. Reisenauer, M.D., an interventional pulmonologist and thoracic surgeon at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, and study site principal investigator. "The slim catheter size, along with the ability to retain its articulation, has allowed us to access lesions that were previously unreachable by standard bronchoscopic techniques."

Specialists at Mayo Clinic's campus in Phoenix/Scottsdale, Arizona, are also using a robotic bronchoscopy system to provide patients with access to this exciting new technology.

For more information

Cone-beam CT for enhanced bronchoscopic access to pulmonary nodules. Mayo Clinic.