Puncture biopsy of the lung. A retrospective evaluation of 127 observations

On the grounds of a suspected localised tumorous lesion of the lung core biopsy (Tru-cut-needle) was performed in 127 patients to obtain a histologic diagnosis. This was successful on an average in 71.6% of the cases. The smaller lung lesions (less than 2.5 cm) showed a lower accuracy (65.2%) than the larger tumours (73.1%). Correct judgement of tumour status was effected in 88.2%. But in these cases also correct assessment of tumour status was less successful with the smaller tumours (69.6%) than with the larger ones (92.3%). In our case material core biopsy had a high complication rate: pneumothorax resulted in 54.3%, requiring special treatment in 9.4%. Haemoptisis was observed in 22.9% of which 2.4% had a severe and life-threatening clinical course. A correlation between these complications and the patient's age, the depth of the tumour in the lung and the frequency of the punctures was established. Pleural fluid was seen in 16.5% but in all cases it was negligible and no treatment was required. The pleural reaction showed no correlation to the age, to the tumorous lesion and to the frequency of puncture. The diagnostic advantage and the high accuracy of the core biopsy are evident. Nevertheless, we gave up this method in routine application in our lung tumour patients in favour of needle biopsy techniques. Core biopsy is still being used in examining special problems only.