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Monday, January 31, 2011

First it was interventional cardiologists vrs chest surgeons,now the pulmonologists?

See here for details regarding the headline. Back in the day, it was the pulmonary folks who helped diagnose and stage the lung cancers and the surgeons took over if the cancer was thought to be resectable. But now things are changing.

From the article linked above which quoted comments made at a recent meeting of the Society of Thoracic Surgery

.. minimally-invasive strategies, such as ablation, to treat small lung tumors without radical resection or even lobectomy are under development [ ed ; and threaten the chest surgeons]


Maybe 'under development" but don't we have a long way to go to treat (remove?) lung cancer through the bronchoscope? But I think one of the participants in the conference linked in the first paragraph above was saying why can't chest surgeons do those things with the bronchoscope if and when those developments get ready for prime time.

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