ABSTRACT

Peripheral lung cancer makes a large portion of solitary peripheral pulmonary lesions which are mostly asymptomatic and, due to their peripheral localization, usually hardly reachable for bronchologic researc.
The investigation aimed at assessing the applied diagnostic procedures included 100 patients with a solitary peripheral lesion who were submitted to thoracotomy after receiving a complete diagnostic protocol, including broncoscopy and transthoracic puncture.
The majority of the patients were males at 50-59 years of age, lacking any symptoms, with a lung lesion in the size of 3-3,9cm commonly localized in the lower right lobe. Bronchoscopy enlightened the etiology of the lesion in 3% of the patients and transthoracal puncture in 70%, achieving the sensitivity of 87%, specificity of 100% and accuracy of 90%, and generating only a few complications. 70% of the lesions were malignant in nature, with adenocarcinoma for the most common lung cancer type.,
Transthoracic puncture has been assessed as a valuable diagnostic procedure to enlighten the etiology of solitary peripheral lung lesions and peripheral lung cancer.

Keywords: solitary peripheral pulmonary lesion, peripheral lung cancer, diagnostics, transthoracic puncture.

Abbreviations:
B - bronchoscopy,
CT – computerized tomography,
SPPL - solitary peripheral pulmonary lesion,
TTP - transthoracic puncture

Correspondence to:
Mirna Djuric, MD, MSc
Institute of Lung Diseases, Sremska Kamenica
21204 Sremska Kamenica, Yugoslavia
phone: + 381 61 57 11 ext.587/341
e_mail: djuriccd@eunet.yu