Interactive Transcript
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Here we have a patient who's been undergoing serial lung
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cancer screening CT exams
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and comes in having skipped a year due
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to the Covid to 19 pandemic.
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So they're two years since their last annual screening ct.
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As we take a look, starting at the apex,
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we see a calcified granuloma right here,
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solidly calcified granuloma,
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which we can look at are different windows to confirm.
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And now we're starting to see some ill-defined, patchy
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round glass and part solid nodularity in the left upper
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lobe multifocal.
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And the further we're scrolling down,
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we're getting into an area of
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geographic dense consolidation here along the periphery.
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More of this ground glass throughout the left upper lobe.
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A lot of it is distributed along the bronchovascular bundles
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and this larger area of ground glass here, maybe
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with a little bronchiectasis in the middle of it, kind
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of wavy, slightly dilated bronchus.
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And we're saying the same type of findings here
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behind the major fissure
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and the superior segment of the left lower lobe as well
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as the anterior aspect or anterior basal left lower lobes.
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We're seeing multifocal round glasss
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and part solid nodularity with
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that single larger area anteriorly in the left upper lobe,
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not seeing anything in the right lung.
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So we kind of got low bar distribution left lung
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and our sagittal
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and coronal images can help us just see this
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in a better distribution relative to the location
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of the fissures as we can see here in the left upper lobe
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and here in the left lower lobe.
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So very important is gonna be for us to compare this
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to prior cts.
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So we look back at the CT the patient had
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in 2019, two years earlier,
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and it looks like all that abnormality is new,
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so new in two years.
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If this was outside of the screening setting,
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we would consider this infection peronial, ground glass,
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patchy consolidation in the left lung only,
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and we would call it infection
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and recommend that as our interpretation
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to the referring physicians in the setting
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of lung cancer screening.
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We often get asked, well, how do you know that one
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of these ground gloss
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or part solid nodules is in the lung cancer?
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And that's always the conundrum
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in the lung cancer screening setting.
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We recommend treating with antibiotics whether they do
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or don't have signs or of infection, a course
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of antibiotics, and then repeating the examination
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in one to three months.
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So I've got the current exam that we're looking at
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with the patient here for the lung cancer screening exam,
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showing us what looks like infection.
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We compared it to the comparison exam from two years
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earlier and it's new.
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But again, we're thinking could any one
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of these little areas of nodularity be a small cancer
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that's developed in the last two years since
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the last screening exam?
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So we recommend that follow up lung cancer
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screening CT in one
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To three months and we call it a long red zero.
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And the patient here did come back and about a month
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and a half later, so within that one
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to three month timeframe
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and most of the abnormality has completely resolved all
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of those multifocal ground glass
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and part solid areas of bronchovascular nodularity resolved
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were left with an area of focal bronchiectasis,
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which we had seen some of that bronchiectasis at the time
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of pneumonia and a little bit of brown glass
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and nodularity here.
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The amount of nodularity is in the lung RADS two category.
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So our recommendation for this CT would be
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to bring the patient back in 12 months
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to continue their annual lung cancer screening journey if
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they remain eligible.
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So again, if it looks like infection, call it infection,
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give it a long ran zero score
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and have the patient come back in one to three months,
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usually after course of antibiotics to confirm
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that the abnormality has nearly completely resolved
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or completely resolved
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so you can make the next lung cancer screening.
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Lung rans recommendation.