Owensboro Health Invests in Lung Biopsy Technology

Patients at Owensboro Health Regional Hospital now benefit from a same-day procedure to diagnose and treat lung cancer, using robot-assisted technology with the Ion endoluminal system using robotic bronchoscopy.

Biopsies, which involve removing a tiny piece of tissue from the suspicious area, are typically performed to diagnose lung issues such as cancer. The biopsy can usually determine whether nodules or masses are malignant (cancerous) or benign (noncancerous).

Robotic bronchoscopy uses an ultra-thin, flexible tube with a camera in it, going in the nose or mouth and through narrow airways in the lung to the lesion. The catheter can move 180 degrees in all directions and can navigate through the lungs to reach nodules in any airway segment.

Once the nodule is reached, the catheter is locked into place, and a needle collects tissue from the mass or nodule. The outpatient procedure, performed under general anesthesia, takes one to two hours. Patients usually go home the same day, with some soreness or numbness in the mouth and throat.

The robotic approach is also beneficial for those with other health concerns, such as severe lung disease or active smoking, both of which can increase infection risk or other rare complications associated with more traditional biopsy options.

“The whole point of lung cancer screening is to take patients who are at high risk of developing lung cancer — based on smoking history or family history — and screen them to catch lung cancer as early as possible. Stage one and two cancers are much easier to treat and have much better outcomes than advanced-stage lung cancers,” said Brad Brasher MD, Owensboro Health pulmonologist. “Having this robotic bronchoscopy allows us to use smaller scopes and go further out into the lung, near the periphery, and biopsy much smaller nodules. When we find these very small nodules on your lung cancer screening CT that could potentially be cancer, instead of having to wait for those to become large enough to biopsy or do more invasive procedures like CT-guided biopsy, that have a higher complication rate. We can now use this technology to biopsy at an earlier time and diagnose more early-stage lung cancer, which is more easily curable with surgery, without having to put the patient through chemotherapy.”

Lung cancer is the leading cause of death among men and women in the United States. There are no symptoms in the early and most curable stages of the disease. With early detection and prompt surgical treatment, the cure rate is 92 percent.

An annual lung CT screening test, which uses a low dose of radiation, can detect the cancer when it’s small. The non-invasive screening is recommended for those most at risk for lung cancer: those over the age of 50 who have smoked, those who once smoked heavily but quit, those with a history of lung cancer, and those with risk factors such as exposure to asbestos or who have chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).

Owensboro Health has partnered with Ion’s maker previously. Ion is made by Intuitive — the company that makes the da Vinci surgical system — and is built on more than two decades of leadership in robot-assisted technology. Owensboro Health Regional Hospital and Owensboro Health Muhlenberg Community Hospital have da Vinci robotic surgical systems for minimally invasive surgical procedures.