Fatal coronary artery air embolism during CT guided percutaneous lung biopsy

Authors

  • Avinash Medsinge Interventional Radiology, University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, USA
  • Catherine Westbom Diagnostic Radiology Resident, University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, USA
  • Srinivas Iyer Interventional Radiology, University of Pittsburgh 1500 Fifth Avenue, UPMC McKeesport, USA

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.3941/jrcr.5297

Abstract

Computed tomography (CT) guided percutaneous transthoracic needle biopsy of lung lesions is a well-established and commonly performed procedure to obtain tissue for histopathology and immuno analysis. The most common complication of the procedure is pneumothorax followed by hemorrhage. Severe complications such as systemic air embolism are rare but can result in significant morbidity and can be potentially fatal if embolization occurs to cerebral or coronary circulation (arteries). We present a case of fatal left coronary artery air embolism sustained during attempted CT guided transthoracic lung biopsy.

Axial CT image lung window show multiple left lower lobe lesions. The medial non-cavitating lesion was targeted for biopsy (arrow)

Downloads

Published

2024-05-31

Issue

Vol. 18 No. 5 (2024)

Section

General Radiology

License

Copyright (c) 2024 Journal of Radiology Case Reports

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International 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.