Virtual Bronchoscopy Navigation (VBN), an advanced facility for diagnosis and treatment of patients with small tumour-like spots in the lungs, which can be cancerous.
The All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) has set up Virtual Bronchoscopy Navigation (VBN), an advanced facility for diagnosis and treatment of patients with small tumour-like spots in the lungs, which can be cancerous.
"The Virtual Bronchoscopy Navigation system was installed in the Department of Pulmonary Medicine and Sleep Disorders at AIIMS on Monday and four initial patients underwent the procedure successfully. We are the first one in the country to set up this facility," said Dr Anant Mohan, Professor of Department of Pulmonary Medicine and Sleep Disorders.
According to the experts, the lung diseases are on the rise and it is not uncommon to find patients who have been diagnosed with small abnormal appearing areas in the lungs which are picked up on chest X-rays and CT scan examinations.
"These small lung lesions can very commonly be lung cancer and if not diagnosed on time, they can increase in size and cancer can spread to other body parts," he said, adding that these could also be related to diseases like TB.
The VBN system allows getting samples from these small lung lesions with extreme precision and safety using a bronchoscope after a 3D view of the windpipe is generated using the CT scan images, thereby avoiding puncturing the lung and reducing complications
"It is difficult to make a definite diagnosis by seeing the appearance of these lesions on the CT scans or the chest X-rays and for that, an image-guided biopsy is needed in which a needle is used to puncture the chest wall to reach the spot," said AIIMS spokesperson, Karan Madan.
Madan, Assistant Professor in the Department of Pulmonary Medicine and Sleep Disorders, informed that the entire facility was set up at a cost of Rs 90 lakh to Rs 1 crore. "Apart from the US and Europe, very few countries in Asia, like China and Singapore, have this facility," he added.
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