RADIOIMMUNOGUIDED SURGERY AND INTRAOPERATIVE LUNG-CANCER STAGING

Radioimmunoguided surgery (RIGS) has proven its worth, especially when used in primary, recurrent, and metastatic colon-rectum adenocarcinom as, and in Liver metastases from other intestinal adenocarcinomas. Unt il now, RIGS has not been investigated for lung cancer surgery, chiefl y because of problems related to the blood pool radioactivity backgrou nd which is at its highest in the thoracic area. The positive RIGS exp erience with other tumors encouraged us to investigate its effectivene ss in lung adenocarcinomas. In six cases, RIGS gave excellent results in the detection of primary pulmonary lesions; no false negatives or f alse positives were shown. Data on lymph nodes revealed one false nega tive. Immunohistochemical staining was always performed in association with traditional pathology of the resected specimens. In one case, a noncancerous lesion, as defined by traditional hematoxylin-eosin (H&E) staining, confirmed RIGS intraoperative finding of nonmalignant tissu e. Semin. Surg. Oncol. 15:215-219, 1998. (C) 1998 Wiley-Liss, Inc.