Clinical Services - Interventional Pulmonology

One advancement is endobronchial ultrasound for staging lung cancer. This outpatient procedure, which involves no-incision biopsies through the mouth or nose, will essentially replace the current standard, which requires an incision in the neck that exposes the lymph nodes.

Another is electromagnetic navigation bronchoscopy (ENB), a minimally invasive approach for diagnosing and planning treatment, for hard-to-reach lung cancer lesions. ENB combines GPS-like technology with a catheter-based system to access lesions deep in the lung. Typically, the options for patients with a spot on the lung involved major surgery or a procedure that might not be able to reach lesions that deep. The less-invasive ENB option offers fewer complications, a quicker recovery and an improved “diagnostic yield,” which means that the quality of the sample is better — leading to a more accurate diagnosis and more highly targeted treatment. 

For a complete list of interventional pulmonary procedures, click here.