What are the diagnostic criteria for lung cancer

For lung cancer patients, the diagnosis of the disease ultimately depends on pathological testing of specimens obtained through bronchoscopy or surgical resection. Pathological diagnosis is the "gold standard" for diagnosing tumors, and other examinations are only helpful for doctors to discover and judge the condition, or track the treatment effect during the treatment process. In other words, any other examinations, such as CT, MRI, etc., even if lumps and lesions are found in the images, cannot ultimately determine the nature and type of the lesions, and the diagnosis still depends on pathological diagnosis. This is the most critical basis in the process of tumor treatment.

Generally speaking, large specimens in pathological diagnosis refer to specimens obtained after surgical resection, while small specimens refer to biopsy specimens obtained through bronchoscope, thoracoscopy or puncture. In addition, specimens obtained by biopsy on the surface of the human body are also called small specimens.

A complete pathological diagnosis includes four aspects of information:

First, the patient's basic information, such as name, gender, age and pathology number. The pathology number is a unique number that each patient has in the hospital where they are examined, which is very important. In addition, each hospital will also include the patient's medical record number or ID number in the basic information according to different circumstances;

Second, the content of the report, that is, the method and location of the sample submitted for inspection. In other words, it is necessary to indicate which organ the sample came from and how it was obtained, such as puncture, laparoscopy or surgical resection;

Third, the content of the pathology report. The content of the pathology report is the most important part of the entire pathology diagnosis, including the type and nature of the lesions found after testing. The specimens obtained by surgical resection also include the extent of tumor invasion, whether lymph node metastasis has occurred, and whether there are vascular tumor thrombi. In addition, if the tumor lesions are atypical, the content of the differential diagnosis needs to be added to the pathology report, and the differential diagnosis of tumors is often achieved using immunohistochemistry;

Fourth, molecular typing. For lung cancer, molecular typing is also a very important part of the pathological diagnosis report. However, the specific content of the molecular typing report may be issued separately later, or it may be attached to the pathology report to form the fourth part.