Diagnosing peRipheral Lung Lesions With CRYO Biopsies

Lung cancer is the leading course of cancer related deaths world-wide. Lung cancer screening will increase the number of small lung lesion in need of biopsy to confirm the diagnosis. Obtaining lung biopsies with a bronchoscopy has the lowest risk of complications (1-2%) compared to other modalities such as transthoracic needle biopsy (20%), however diagnostic yield needs improvement. Currently a diagnosis is established in 50- 70% of the bronchoscopic procedures depending on the step-up. One way to improve the yield would be by using a cryo probe through the bronchoscope which freezes a small part of the lung for extraction, and thereby provides larger biopsies for examination. This will increase the chances of obtaining sufficient material from a small lesion to determine the diagnosis.

The DR CRYO study will compare cryo biopsies to forceps biopsies for the diagnosis of peripheral lung lesions.

We hope that the cryo biopsies can improve the diagnostic capabilities of bronchoscopy and provide better biopsies for tumor marker analyses. The project is relevant both for patients undergoing diagnostic work-up for lung cancer in early stages .