The utility of needle biopsy examinations of resected surgical specimens for diagnosing small lung cancer

Abstract

We developed an intraoperative histological procedure for improving the diagnosis of cases of small lung cancer that exhibit a ground glass with solid appearance on computed tomography and predicting minimally invasive adenocarcinoma. We punctured the center of a tumor lesion in a resected lung tissue specimen using a biopsy needle and microscopically examined the obtained tumor tissue during intraoperative evaluation. After surgery, a final pathological examination was performed using a complete (maximal diameter) tumor section, which was produced from the formalin-fixed resected surgical specimen without cutting through the tumor.

This technique is useful for checking whether resected lung tissue specimens contain cancerous tissue without having to cut the tumor during the intraoperative evaluation, which would make it difficult to evaluate pleural or stromal invasion during postoperative assessments of tumor aggressiveness based on the new World Health Organization classification.