The Journal of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery, Vol 84, 44-48, Copyright © 1982 by The American Association for Thoracic Surgery and The Western Thoracic Surgical Association
Surgical management of the radiologically identified but nonpalpable pulmonary lesion
RA Lim, GW Iwasiuk and R Carter
A solitary intrapulmonary nodule may, on rare occasions, be of the same
consistency as the pulmonary tissue and therefore not be palpable by the
surgeon at operation nor by the pathologist in the removed specimen. The
importance of routine preoperative anatomic localization of such lesions is
obvious. In a series of four patients, resection of the lobe containing the
nodule was possible and the lesions were identified after meticulous serial
sectioning of the excised lung parenchyma. Two of the lesions proved to be
carcinoid bronchial tumors and two others were alveolar cell carcinoma.