Endobronchial ultrasound-guided transbronchial needle aspiration: a maturing technique

Accurate, quick pathological identification of a pulmonary or mediastinal mass is one of most challenging issues in thoracic oncology. This is particularly important when it comes to operable lung cancers in which a pre-surgical evaluation of mediastinal lymph node involvement is widely recognized as indispensible. For this purpose, mediastinoscopy was an accepted gold standard with 80% sensitivity and 100% specificity in the screening (1). Unfortunately, considerable invasiveness and the need for general anesthesia associated with mediastinoscopy limit the accessibility of this procedure to N2-3 lymph nodes; moreover, repetitive mediastinoscopy is hardly feasible owing to the formation of dense adhesions