Fine Needle Biopsy: An Easier Way to Diagnose Mesothelioma?
IExamining the tissue from a suspected tumor under a microscope is currently the only way to definitively diagnose suspected mesothelioma. But doctors at the University of Catania say cutting-needle biopsy, the pleural biopsy technique used by most surgeons, may be unnecessarily painful for patients. In their response to a recent published article on the subject in the journal Chest, Dr. Marco Sperandeo and colleagues present the case for what they say is a less traumatic type of biopsy – thoracic ultrasound-guided fine needle aspiration. According to the Italian researchers, “These tools, quite neglected, are complementary to CT imaging in patients with malignant pleural mesothelioma (MPM) or lung cancer (LC), are less traumatic, and are equally or more successful, with minimal…