Error message
Robotic Technology Means Diagnosing Lung Cancer Sooner
July 6, 2023
By: Tallahassee Memorial HealthCare
Categories: Healthy Living
Lung cancer is one of the deadliest forms of cancer because there are often no symptoms when the disease is in its earliest stages. However, Tallahassee Memorial HealthCare (TMH) has technology that allows our physicians to diagnose this terrible disease earlier than ever – which can be the difference between life and death.
In a recent Q&A, Carlos Campo, MD, Pulmonologist and Critical Care Physician at TMH, explained how the MONARCH™ Robotic Bronchoscopy Platform works and could help improve outcomes for local cancer patients.
Q: How does this new technology work?
TMH has been performing bronchoscopy procedures for many years, but recently became the first healthcare system in the region to use the MONARCH™ Robotic Bronchoscopy Platform, allowing TMH physicians to navigate to lesions and nodules in the lungs that were harder to get to in the past using traditional bronchoscopy.
Bronchoscopy is a procedure that lets doctors look at your lungs and air passages using a thin tube (bronchoscope) that is passed through your nose or mouth, down your throat and into your lungs. The MONARCH™ is an image-guided robot that allows doctors to navigate to areas of the lungs that are difficult to reach.
Q: Does this increase the ability to find lesions in the lungs earlier?
Simply put, yes. The purpose of this equipment is to help physicians get to these lesions at an earlier stage and hopefully that has an impact on the patient’s outcome. The MONARCH™ platform lowers the diagnostic threshold by as much as 15% —meaning that our physicians are more likely to find lesions in the lungs in fewer attempts.
Q: What is the experience for a patient who is using this technology?
From the patient perspective, it’s similar to any other endoscopy procedure. It involves general anesthesia, and patients typically go home the same day.
Q: If a patient receives a cancer diagnosis, what comes next?
Next you do staging, and then determine whether they’re a surgical candidate, or a candidate for chemotherapy or radiation, depending on what kind of lung cancer it is. And then you move forward with therapy.
At TMH, we have the region’s only collaborative thoracic oncology clinic, which brings physicians and specialists together to determine the best treatment for patients who have been diagnosed with lung cancer, expediting the time it takes these patients to get from a cancer diagnosis to treatment.
Q: Does this have the potential to change the way lung cancer is diagnosed in Tallahassee?
I think it’s a game changer in that we can diagnose lung cancer earlier and then refer to the treating physicians whether it’s surgery, chemotherapy or radiation. It allows us to hopefully start the treatment process much sooner.
People between the ages of 50 and 80 years old, in fairly good health, who currently smoke or have quit in the past 15 years, and have at least a 20 pack-year smoking history (meaning they’ve smoked an average of one pack per day for 20 years or more) should speak with their primary care provider about lung cancer screening.
To learn more about lung cancer treatment at TMH, please visit TMH.ORG/LungCancer.
