A few months ago, a 70-years old ex-smoker, was referred for a CT scan guided lung nodule biopsy. I thought the nodule looked benign and non-cancerous, but there were no prior scans or radiographs to compare with. My coordinator kept pushing the patient and his relatives to check for old reports. They kept saying they didn’t have any. Finally, one day prior to the biopsy, the daughter-in-law came over with an X-ray of the chest done 10 years ago, as part of the pre-operative work-up for a gall bladder surgery. The same nodule that I was supposed to biopsy was present on that 10-years old chest X-ray…unchanged. Any lung nodule that remains the same for more than two years is assumed to be benign and left alone. When I told the patient and the family this, they were overjoyed…from a potential lung cancer, the diagnosis had changed to…”nothing abnormal to worry about”.https://ift.tt/3BHSnqQ