Background: Concerning the complications resulting from percutaneous needle biopsy (PNB), although cases of tumor seeding into the needle track have occasionally been reported, there were only two cases of pleural recurrences to date. The aim of this study was to elucidate the real risk of pleural recurrence after needle biopsy in patients with resected early stage lung cancer.
Methods: Between 1986 and 2000, 335 patients with stage I nonsmall cell lung cancer underwent complete resection of the lung tumor. We retrospectively reviewed their medical records and investigated the relationship between the diagnostic methods used and the cancer recurrence patterns.
Results: Preoperative diagnoses were obtained for 290 patients; 220 were diagnosed by bronchoscopy and 66 by PNB. Among the patients without a preoperative diagnosis, 27 were diagnosed by intraoperative needle biopsy and 14 by wedge resection of the lung. Tumors diagnosed by needle biopsy including PNB and intraoperative needle biopsy were smaller and showed less vessel invasion than those diagnosed by other methods (p < 0.01). After surgical resection, 9 patients had pleural recurrence and 1 patient, needle track implantation. Seven of these 10 patients were diagnosed by needle biopsy using 18G cutting type needle. Pleural recurrence or needle track implantation was observed for 8.6% of the patients who underwent a needle biopsy, whereas it was 0.9% for patients who were examined using other diagnostic modalities (p = 0.0009).
Conclusions: Needle biopsy especially using a cutting-type biopsy needle can cause a pleural recurrence in addition to needle track implantation.