The collection of a sample of lung tissue for a laboratory analysis ( lung biopsy) can take place in four distinct ways. In fact, there are: bronchoscopic biopsy, pulmonary needle biopsy, open lung biopsy and thoracoscopic biopsy.
The first two approaches are minimally invasive, they are performed under local anesthesia and do not involve any hospitalization; the second two methods, on the other hand, are delicate surgical procedures that require general anesthesia and a hospitalization of at least a couple of days.
Why then resort to an open lung biopsy or a thoracoscopic biopsy?
The answer is very simple: for the reliability of the samples that can be taken and the specificity of the results.
Moreover, they allow to take only from certain areas of the lung, which could make the following laboratory investigations completely useless. For example, a bronchoscopic biopsy performed in the presence of an extra-bronchial lung cancer (ie located externally to the airways) is free of anomalies, even if the real situation is completely different.
