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Bronchoscopy: A not-so-innocent invasive examination

Bronchoscopy has for many years been the only invasive examination used to screen for bronchus in real time, remove objects that have entered the airway, healing properties, and finally a sample including missing tissue for biopsy for the right follow up medical evaluation and treatment. The usual examination is performed by a flexible bronchoscope which does not cause much discomfort to the patient and causes few complications, complications such as bleeding, cardiac arrhythmias, fever, pneumonia, death, introduction and exacerbation of infection, etc. This short research is about to overturn this nice and enjoyable environment that has been created regarding the safety of this invasive examination…

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 The top 100 most cited articles on bronchoscopy: a bibliometric analysis

German laryngologist Gustav Killian performed the first bronchoscopy by using rigid bronchoscopy to remove a pork bone from a patient’s airway in 1897. The procedure was performed while the patient was awake and cocaine was utilized as a local anesthetic. Nowadays, endoscopy techniques have developed into an approach which can effectively detect and localize critical early pathological changes occurring in the bronchial epithelium and subepithelial regions of human bodies

Articles of Interest

Bronchoscopy Enough or Too Much?

Hippocrates's caveat, primum non nocere, or “do no harm,” applies to fiberoptic bronchoscopy (FFB). We support Robin's1 analysis of iatroepidemics, the plagues caused by physicians. Dr. Robin cited a probable iatroepidemic of excess diagnostic fiberoptic bronchoscopy in many patients in whom “no firm indication exists that any therapeutically useful information will emerge.” The American Thoracic Society has published guidelines for fiberoptic bronchoscopy in adults, urging “experience and sound clinical judgment in individual cases.”

Complications of bronchoscopy: A concise synopsis

Flexible and rigid bronchoscopes are used in diagnosis, therapeutics, and palliation. While their use is widespread, effective, and generally safe; there are numerous potential complications that can occur. Mechanical complications of bronchoscopy are primarily related to airway manipulations or bleeding. Systemic complications arise from the procedure itself, medication administration (primarily sedation), or patient comorbidities.

Interstitial lung disease: the diagnostic role of bronchoscopy

Recently, however, the use of cryotherapy via employing a cryoprobe in obtaining transbronchial lung biopsies is unfolding into a refined interventional method which might transform indefinitely our approach to the pathological diagnosis of the various ILDs.

My experience of bronchoscopy as a patient on the Oxford Airways Study

The bronchoscopy started but I did not realise the camera was being inserted. One of my worst fears was that I would choke and bring up a lot of blood. Instead, I did not find it uncomfortable, and I did not even feel any sensation of the camera being inserted or samples being taken. My fears of swallowing the camera, having a lung puncture or blood clots emerging did not manifest themselves at all!

Robotic Bronchoscopy: A Comprehensive Review

Though studies have been mixed regarding the accuracy and diagnostic yield of RAB, it is certain that the use of RAB will only continue to grow in the future. The therapeutic applications of RAB have been under investigation, along with some innovative ideas for how we can use its high stability and lesion localization to our advantage.

The evolution of the bronchoscopy: diagnostics and breakthrough treatments

During the past 70 years, advances in bronchoscopy have been transformative in respiratory medicine. The evolution of this surgical tool has brought innovations and new treatments at an astonishing rate. Even the amount of technological leaps that I have witnessed in just the last decade is phenomenal.

Therapeutic bronchoscopy for central airway diseases

Over the past century rigid bronchoscopy has been established as the main therapeutic means for central airway diseases of both benign and malignant aetiology. Its use requires general anaesthesia and mechanical ventilation usually in the form of manual or high-frequency jet ventilation. Techniques applied to regain patency of the central airways include mechanical debulking, thermal ablation (laser, electrocautery and argon plasma coagulation) and cryo-surgery.

What is a Bronchoscopy?

While the procedure’s name may sound intimidating, fear not: a bronchoscopy is a painless procedure that helps get to the bottom of problems you might be having with your airways.

Resources

StatPearls

Since its introduction to clinical practice by Shigeto Ikeda in 1966, flexible bronchoscopy has become an essential tool in diagnosis and management of patients with lung diseases. Rigid bronchoscopy can be particularly helpful in therapeutic cases.