Central airway tumors: interventional bronchoscopy in diagnosis and management

Patients with central airway tumors usually have nonspecific clinical manifestation and lead to delayed diagnosis. Computed tomography (CT) scan is the best noninvasive method for airway lesion evaluation (1). Bronchoscopy is still the mainstay to approaching endobronchial lesion. The conventional methods to obtained specimen include forceps biopsy, brushing or washing the lesion under direct vision. However, the diagnostic yield of conventional forceps biopsy is limited because of the small size of tissue sample and crush artifacts (2,3). Newly developed cryotechnology provide larger sample than that of conventional forceps biopsy and have better diagnostic yield (2)