Systemic Air Embolism after Percutaneous Lung Biopsy: A Manageable Complication

Authors

  • Lucas Fiore
  • Nathan Elie Frenk
  • Guilherme Lopes Pinheiro Martins
  • Publio Cesar Cavalcante Viana
  • Marcos Roberto de Menezes

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.3941/jrcr.v11i6.2990

Keywords:

Computed tomography, Lung tumor, CT guided lung biopsy, Air embolism, Gas embolism

Abstract

CT-guided percutaneous biopsy is a resourceful and widely used tool to evaluate pulmonary nodules that frequently avoids costly and unnecessary surgeries. Severe complications occur in less than 1% of cases and include gas embolism, which is rarely documented. We report a case of gas embolism after transthoracic biopsies and discuss the pathophysiology and the benefits of early diagnosis and proper management.
Journal of Radiology Case Reports June 2017 issue - Cover page: A pictorial review of reconstructive foot and ankle surgery: evaluation and intervention of the flatfoot deformity by Andrew J Meyr et al.

Downloads

Published

2017-06-27

Issue

Vol. 11 No. 6 (2017)

Section

Thoracic Radiology

License

The publisher holds the copyright to the published articles and contents. However, the articles in this journal are open-access articles distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 License, which permits reproduction and distribution, provided the original work is properly cited. The publisher and author have the right to use the text, images and other multimedia contents from the submitted work for further usage in affiliated programs. Commercial use and derivative works are not permitted, unless explicitly allowed by the publisher.