Surgeons Navigate Lungs With 3-D Maps

Mapquest gives drivers a custom-made way to avoid getting lost on highways, and now surgeons at University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill are using a similar idea to avoid getting lost in patients’ lungs.

Dr. Rick Feins, head of general thoracic surgery at UNC Hospitals, said the technology, which uses electromagnetic seeds to make landmarks in lungs, will help surgeons perform more accurate biopsies for patients facing cancer _ the No. 1 cancer killer that takes 160,000 lives a year.

Current scans, including traditional X-rays and more sophisticated tools, can pick up lung tumors earlier, when they are more treatable. But such scans can’t reliably tell who actually has cancer and who has benign lumps called nodules. Taking out the lump and looking at it under a microscope is the only way to tell for sure.

"They all have to be ferreted out one by one," said Feins, who specializes in lung surgery.

With standard minimally invasive surgery techniques, surgeons use a scope that they maneuver through the airways to get to the nodule. But they have only a general sense of how to get there. The periphery of the organ, where most nodules are, often can’t be removed without opening the patient’s chest.

The system Feins started using this fall begins with the patient having a special CT scan that is used to create a 3-D map of the lungs. The map is used to chart the quickest route to nodules in the lungs, while electromagnetic seeds are placed to mark the way. The doctors then use a positioning device to follow the path set by the electromagnetic markers and home in on the nodule.