Question Doctor Aluri, following are parts of the post-operative report of the surgeon. Would you put it into layman's language for me:
"I anticipated doing a thoracoscopy. However, the patient's pleural space was pretty much encompassed with pleural effusions,making a thorascopic approach unsafe. A decortication was done.
Several nodules palpable were then excised. These were sent to Dr. Fu for frozen section analysis, and they were returned with a benign diagnosis. Cultures are pending."
Doctor, it looks like I was wrong about there being just two excisions as the word "several" is
used here.
Ray
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Followup To
Question -
Dear doctor Aluri,
On August 4 I underwent an open lung biopsy. Two samples of tissue were taken which proved not to be cancerous. I have something called interstitial pneumonitis. I still don't understand what it is or how it gave the appearance of possible cancer.
After the sections of lung were taken for analysis, were those two places sewn up with stitches?
Answer -
Dear Ray,
It's good to hear from you, I like the diagnosis of Interstitial Pneumonitis better any day then cancer.
Usually after doing the biopsy they can suture it or they just staple it I usually think it is the later that they do as they have more safety with staples then with sutures. Staple also cause less inflammation then sutures do, Now as for the question of why it would mimic cancer, that is the $64,000 question, they have calcifications which are also seen in lung cancer so that is the stickler there.
But I am glad to hear that the procedure went well. Keep in touch Ray
A.K. Aluri MD
Answer Dear Ray,
Whenever we do a biopsy of an area we will take specimens and submit them to pathology, now the lymph nodes all removed were shown to have been benign through multiple sections which the pathologist will report. I see that there was a massive fluid collection so for that purpose they could not do the procedure through a camera (Thoracoscopy) so they had to do an open biopsy and also remove a part of the covering of the lung tissue which is known as decortication. Also do you have the specific biopsy results that si given by the pathologist? If you could give me the results as to the lymph nodes ampled and the exact pathology i would be able to help.
