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Malignant Tumors of the Lung pp 131–138Cite as

Differential Diagnosis

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Abstract

In most cases, the typical clinical and radiological appearance of lung cancer with a primary lesion combined with hilar or mediastinal lymphadenopathy, or even distant metastases in frequently affected organs, will not raise the question of a differential diagnosis. Yet, a number of clinically relevant findings - such as solitary pulmonary nodules (SPNs), mediastinal lymphadenopathy or mass, parenchymal or bronchial lymphangitic spread or malignant pleural effusion call for algorithms to exclude other entities with different therapeutic consequences. Clinical plausibility is still needed when cytology, or even histology is present, as specimens from invasive diagnostic procedures other than surgical cannot reach an accuracy of 100%, due to sample size on the one hand and tumor heterogeneity on the other, in addition to possible disagreement among pathologists (Thomas et al. 1993; Roggli et al. 1985; Jones et al. 2001). Furthermore, virtually all tumor types recognizable by light microscopy may occur in organs other than the lungs.

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  1. N. Schoenfeld
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Service de Médicine, Institut Jules Bordet, 1, rue Héger-Bordet, 1000, Bruxelles, Belgium

    Jean-Paul Sculier M.D., Ph.D.

  2. 1111 Sunset Road, Winnetka, IL, 60093, USA

    Willard A. Fry M.D.

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© 2004 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Schoenfeld, N. (2004). Differential Diagnosis. In: Sculier, JP., Fry, W.A. (eds) Malignant Tumors of the Lung. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-18698-1_10

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-18698-1_10

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