How to accurately detect small cell lung cancer

How to accurately check for small cell lung cancer? Small cell lung cancer is a disease that troubles most people in today's society. This disease is mostly detected when people are young but not paying attention to it until they are older. So how to accurately check for small cell lung cancer? Let's follow us to learn about it.

First, let’s understand what small cell lung cancer is:

Small cell lung cancer is a type of lung cancer, accounting for about 20% of lung cancer. Small cell lung cancer is highly malignant, has a short doubling time, and metastasizes early and widely. It is sensitive to chemotherapy and radiotherapy, and has a high initial remission rate, but it is very prone to secondary drug resistance and relapse. Systemic chemotherapy is the main treatment. Chest X-ray examination is the simplest, most convenient and cheapest examination method.

1. Mediastinoscopy: For cases that are difficult to diagnose with conventional methods, mediastinoscopy and biopsy can be considered. It is of great diagnostic significance for upper mediastinal lymph node metastasis or anterior mediastinal lymph node invasion.

2. Tumor marker examination: The main markers are NSE, CEA, SCC, CYFR21-1, etc., which lack specificity and have certain reference value for disease monitoring.

3. Thoracoscopic and open-chest biopsy: For peripheral lesions, mediastinal lesions or pleural lesions that are difficult to diagnose, thoracoscopy or open-chest exploratory biopsy may be considered.

4. Positron emission tomography (PET): Whole-body PET is significantly more accurate than CT and radionuclide bone scanning in identifying lung masses, lymph nodes or distant metastases.

5. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI): It is not as good as CT in detecting small lung lesions, but it can more clearly show the relationship between the tumor and large blood vessels. When determining whether there is intracranial metastasis, enhanced MRI is the first choice.

6. Fiberoptic bronchoscopy: It can observe the location, size and extent of the tumor infiltrating into the bronchial cavity, and obtain tissue for pathological examination. Endobronchial ultrasound (EBUS) is a new technology. For lesions with only airway compression but no intracavitary tumors, this examination can help clarify the extent of the lesion and improve the accuracy of transmural biopsy.

7. Percutaneous lung biopsy: It is performed under CT guidance. The biopsy positive rate is as high as 90%. If the tumor contains a large amount of necrotic area, it is often false negative.