Experience of staining test in the endoscopic diagnosis of lung cancer

Abstract

The cancer infiltration in the bronchial wall is often judged endoscopically. The author used toluidine blue to try bronchoscopic examination of lung cancer, and to see its usefulness in detection of cancer infiltration in the bronchial wall. The subjects were 21 cases of epidermoid carcinoma and 4 cases of small cell carcinoma, total 25 cases, in whom findings of tumor and infiltration had been obtained endoscopically. Endoscopically the parts of tumor and carcinoma in situ or early infiltrating carcinoma stains dark blue. On the other hand, the part of submucosal infiltration stains pale purple. In the biopsy of the parts of dark blue histological diagnosis was always obtained, while in the biopsy of unstained parts histological diagnosis was not often obtained, and so this staining method seemed to become a means to judge the part of biopsy. From the above, this method can be considered a valuable method that should be studied with more cases in future.