Archives of pathology & laboratory medicine
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Arch. Pathol. Lab. Med. · Jul 2017
ReviewTransbronchial Cryobiopsy in Diffuse Lung Disease: Update for the Pathologist.
- Transbronchial cryobiopsy has recently been proposed as an alternative to surgical biopsy in the diagnosis of diffuse lung disease. ⋯ - Cryobiopsies are considerably larger than forceps biopsies and allow pattern recognition approaching that of a surgical lung biopsy in many cases. Artifacts associated with cryobiopsy are minimal. In comparison with surgical lung biopsies, the diagnosis rate with cryobiopsies is lower, in the neighborhood of 80%, versus higher than 90% for surgical lung biopsies. Cryobiopsy is proposed as an alternative to surgical lung biopsy and a technique that may appreciably decrease the number of patients who require surgical lung biopsy for diagnosis. This is important because the mortality from cryobiopsy is very small (0.1% to date) compared with surgical lung biopsy (1.7% for elective procedures and considerably higher for nonelective procedures).
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Arch. Pathol. Lab. Med. · Jul 2017
Interstitial Pneumonia With Autoimmune Features: Value of Histopathology.
- Patients with idiopathic interstitial pneumonia may display evidence of autoimmunity without meeting criteria for a defined connective tissue disease. A recent European Respiratory Society/American Thoracic Society statement proposed research criteria for interstitial pneumonia with autoimmune features (IPAF), which includes findings from the clinical, serologic, and morphologic domains. ⋯ - Using a methodological approach to identifying IPAF pathology, we demonstrate a significant increase in the number of patients meeting IPAF criteria because of focused pathologic review and highlight the prognostic value of the IPAF pathologic findings.