Minimally Invasive, Diagnosis and Staging of Lung Cancer

The gold standard techniques to assess the extent of disease and decide on therapy for patients with lung cancer consists of cervical mediastinoscopy, which is a surgical procedure which entails an incision in the neck and the removal of lymph nodes from around the airway. Endobronchial ultrasound (EBUS) and endoscopic ultrasound (EUS) are new, non-surgical techniques that have been available for the past several years and are proving invaluable in lung cancer evaluation. These techniques are minimally invasive and can be performed without surgery. To date, there have been no head-to-head studies on the same group of patients using both the old and new techniques. The study will consist of a study which compares traditional staging techniques in lung cancer patients to new, less invasive techniques. The significance of the proposed project is tremendous. If the new strategies prove to be equivalent (or superior) to traditional techniques, these techniques will be considered the new gold-standard tests. This will change the way lung cancer is evaluated. An equivalent or superior result will also significantly impact on patient care, cost and morbidity due to the speed, convenience and lack of operating room requirement as well as the lack of general anesthesia.