Pathological Examination and Differential Diagnosis of Pulmonary Ground-Glass Opacities by CT-Guided Percutaneous Needle Biopsy

Abstract

In order to explore the pathological examination and differential diagnosis of pulmonary ground-glass opacities (GGO) with CT-guided percutaneous needle biopsy (CTPNB), this study retrospectively analyzed the medical records of 120 cases of patients who were diagnosed with pulmonary GGO and underwent CTPNB in a hospital designated by this study from December 2014 to December 2018. The results showed that all the 120 cases of patients were successfully punctured at one time and obtained sufficient tissue specimens with the puncture success rate and diagnostic accuracy both of 100%, being able to make a clear qualitative diagnosis. Among them, 30 cases were malignant lesions including 14 cases of bronchioloalveolar carcinoma and 16 cases of metastatic carcinoma; 90 cases were benign lesions including 52 cases of hematogenous pulmonary tuberculosis, 14 cases of sarcoidosis, 12 cases of silicosis and coal workers’ pneumoconiosis, 6 cases of interstitial pneumonia, 4 cases of alveolar proteinosis, and 2 case of allergic pneumonia. The complications of the 120 patients during the treatment included 8 cases of pneumothorax with an incidence of 6.67% (8/120), in which 2 case had the pulmonary tissue compression rate of about 25% and the other cases had no obvious perceived symptoms and required no special treatment, and 10 cases of hemoptysis with an incidence of 8.33% (10/120), whose symptoms disappeared after the treatment with batroxobin, and had no serious symptoms such as air embolism complication. The sensitivity, specificity, and accuracy of CTPNB in the diagnosis of malignant pulmonary GGO were 83.67% (82/98), 100% (22/22), and 86.67% (104/120), respectively, without statistically significant differences in diagnostic efficacy (P > 0.05). In summary, the CTPNB for the diagnosis of malignant pulmonary GGO has high sensitivity, specificity, and accuracy, and the CTPNB is also the simplest and most important approach to obtain effective pathological examinations and differential diagnoses of pulmonary GGO, which has simple operation, high accuracy and few complications, and has high application value for the qualitative diagnosis of pulmonary GGO.