Thoracic surgery clinics
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Thoracic surgery clinics · Nov 2008
ReviewMinimally invasive staging of N2 disease: endobronchial ultrasound/transesophageal endoscopic ultrasound, mediastinoscopy, and thoracoscopy.
In 2005 the American College of Surgeons conducted a survey examining lung cancer practice patterns at 729 hospitals in the United States. In 11,668 surgically treated patients, 92% received a preoperative chest CT. ⋯ In the remaining 42% only the lymph node material attached to the surgical specimen (N1 nodes) was sampled. Although this article discusses the finer points of the minimally invasive evaluation of the N2 lymph nodes, any procedure to evaluate these nodes is better than simply ignoring them.