'CT of the solitary pulmonary nodule'--a commentary.

摘要

Since the introduction of chest radiography, radiologists have been struggling to distinguish between benign and malignantpulmonary nodules on imaging. Surgically removing all suspicious nodules is not only impractical because of their prevalence in the population but also because of the associated risk because the mean postoperative mortality rate after lung cancer resection in the United States is 5% .CT revolutionized the workup of solitary pulmonary nodules by markedly improving the detection rate compared with chest radiography and linear tomography and by allowing radiologists to objectively measure the internal characteristics of nodules. However, neither of these advantages was apparent in the early days of CT use.The use of CT in chest imaging initially encountered some reluctance because of radiography's high quality in imaging pulmonary nodules, secondary to the natural contrast, air. CT was eagerly embraced by those imaging the brain and abdomen, but not the chest . In the late 1970s, CT detection of pulmonary nodules was proven to be superior to chest radiography and linear tomography . Improved detection led to more nodules detected, which made it more important to distinguish benign from malignant nodules.