Management of the peripheral small ground-glass opacities.
Pure ground-glass opacities (GGO) with a small consolidation area are mostly bronchioloalveolar carcinomas that have not yet become invasive, whereas a minority represents only inflammatory changes. Even if they are cancers, they are slow-growing and often remain unchanged for several years. There is no need for immediate resection of GGO lesions and a watchful waiting strategy is recommended. It seems that a lower-impact surgery (eg, wedge resection or segmentectomy) is curative for these lung cancers. Because high-resolution CT seems to predict noninvasive or minimally invasive GGO lung cancers with high reliability, less invasive treatments like radiofrequency ablation have greater appeal.
Yoshida
Junji
J
Division of Thoracic Surgery, Department of Thoracic Oncology, National Cancer Center Hospital East, 6-5-1, Kashiwanoha, Kashiwa, Chiba, 277-8577, Japan. jyoshida@east.ncc.go.jp
D002282:Adenocarcinoma, Bronchiolo-Alveolar / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging* / Q000473:pathology / Q000601:surgery*; D006801:Humans; D008175:Lung Neoplasms / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging* / Q000473:pathology / Q000601:surgery*; D009367:Neoplasm Staging; D011013:Pneumonectomy / Q000379:methods; D016032:Randomized Controlled Trials as Topic; D036542:Tomography, Spiral Computed / Q000379:methods*; D016896:Treatment Outcome