A chest computed tomography (CT) scan finds a lung nodule; what is the significance of that?
Brett Elicker, MD, chief of Cardiac & Pulmonary Imaging at the UC San Francisco Department of Radiology and Biomedical Imaging spoke about this topic as part of the UCSF Osher Mini Medical School lecture series. A video of his lecture can be seen below.
When a radiologist screens for lung cancer, they are looking for lung nodules (or masses). However, it is very common to have lung nodules that are not cancer. In fact, more than 50 percent of CT scans performed at UCSF will have at least one lung nodule, and the majority are benign (not cancer).
With this in mind, many patients might ask, “Am I going to die from this spot on my lung?” The answer is that a lung nodule is more likely to represent a granuloma or hamartoma as opposed to cancer. How do radiologists distinguish between…
