What should we pay attention to in interventional treatment of lung cancer? Four knowledge points about interventional treatment of lung cancer

Interventional treatment of lung cancer is a palliative treatment. Its advantages are that it can relieve clinical symptoms, reduce patient pain, and prolong life. It is also simple to operate, less invasive, and highly repeatable. From the earliest and classic bronchial artery embolization and perfusion, to the later transpulmonary artery perfusion, tracheobronchial, cryotherapy such as hydrogen-nitrogen knife, and local treatment via fiberbronchoscope, or image-guided radiofrequency or energy-focusing knife treatment, stent treatment for superior vena cava obstruction, and percutaneous puncture of intratumoral drug injection, interventional treatment of lung cancer is gradually becoming a comprehensive therapy with multiple pathways (vascular and non-vascular) and multiple purposes (primary lesion treatment and complication treatment) based on the bronchial artery pathway.

Various interventional diagnostic and treatment methods for lung cancer have different scopes of application and purposes:

1. Lung cancer puncture biopsy is mainly used to clarify the pathological tissue components of lung cancer and determine the tissue type of the tumor, whether it is squamous cell carcinoma, adenocarcinoma, or other types of lung cancer. This is to prepare for the next step of chemotherapy.

2. Tracheal artery chemotherapy infusion is a procedure that infuses high concentrations of anti-tumor chemotherapy drugs into the bronchial artery, the blood vessel that supplies the tumor, through a catheter.

3. Bronchial artery chemoembolization is based on perfusion, and then embolizes the bronchial artery with gelatin sponge, or first embolizes the peripheral blood vessels of the tumor with the chemotherapy drug iodinated benzyl alcohol emulsion, and then embolizes the bronchial artery with gelatin sponge. Since the blood supply of lung cancer mostly comes from the bronchial artery, bronchial artery chemoperfusion and chemoembolization are the main methods of interventional treatment of lung cancer.

4. Percutaneous intratumoral drug injection is mainly suitable for lung cancer whose blood supply does not come from the bronchial artery but is ectopically located in other tissues, or the blood supply of the tumor lesion is anastomosed with the wall and surrounding soft tissue, presenting a reticular blood supply.