CT's growing role in the detection and assessment of lung cancer will be a major topic at Chest 2000, the annual scientific assembly of the American College of Chest Physicians being held in San Francisco this week.
One of the first sessions will be moderated by Dr. Mark Rosen, chief of the division of pulmonary and critical-care medicine at the Beth Israel Medical Center in New York City. Dr. Daniel Libby from Weill-Cornell Medical Center in New York and Dr. Joseph Govert from Duke University Medical Center in Durham, NA will debate the pros and cons of a lung cancer screening program. Also, Dr. Tom Sutedja from University Hospital in Amsterdam in the Netherlands will discuss high-resolution CT and autofluorescence bronchoscopy for accurate staging of occult lung cancer.
Dr. Claudia Henschke from New York Presbyterian Hospital-Weill Cornell Medical Center in New York City will speak on what to expect in CT screening for lung cancer.
Other imaging-related programs at Chest 2000 will cover:
- How PET can be used to diagnose lung cancer, with Dr. Shirin Shafazand from the division of pulmonary and critical care medicine at Stanford University in California.
- New ways to quantify the extent and severity of emphysema with CT, chaired by Dr. Robert Rogers from the pulmonary, allergy, and critical-care medicine division at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center in Pennsylvania.
- The radiologist’s role in the evaluation of mediastinal metastases, by Dr. Todd Hazelton from the department of radiology at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center in Denver.
- The advantages and limitations of transesophageal echocardiography (TEE) in the diagnosing and managing acute aortic syndrome and how it compares to CT and MRI, a presentation by Dr. Howard Willens from the department of medicine at Memorial Regional Hospital in Hollywood, FL.
The conference coincides with the publication of two new studies in the latest issues of Radiology and the British Journal of Radiology. In the latter, Japanese investigators compared the pathological features of rapidly growing, small peripheral lung cancers to their radiological appearance on screening CT.
In Radiology, investigators from the department of radiology at New York Presbyterian Hospital-Weill Cornell Medical Center, including Claudia Henschke, used high-resolution CT volumetric measurements to assess the growth of small pulmonary nodules.
Next page: CT features of small nodules
