Member Comments are provided by individuals and reflect their personal opinions only. Under NO circumstances should you act on any advice or opinion posted in this forum. ALWAYS check with your personal physician before taking any action regarding your health! MedHelp International and our partners, sponsors and affiliates have no obligation to monitor any comments posted on this site, or the content and/or accuracy of such exchanges. MedHelp International does not endorse the views of any user.
Please Help.
by Doc2324, Dec 31, 2007 12:23PM
Hello everyone! I don't really know if this is the right place to ask this but I am sort of at a loss of where to go. My grandmother (83) recently had trouble breathing and was rushed to the hospital immediately. The doctors then explained that their was a "mass" on the top of her right lung via x-ray and decided it would be best to do a Bronchoscopy. Today, the results came back negative, however the doctor mentioned today that during the procedure while looking at the mass he believed that it was malignant and wants to do the procedure a second time. What I want to know is how great are the possibilities that this mass is indeed a malignant. Also, 4 months prior to this, she also went through open heart surgery in NYU medical hospital where they took numerous x-rays of her chest, however they did not find ANYTHING during that time. ANY input would be greatly appreciated. Thank you SO much.
Related discussions
-
What could this RLL mass be if not cancer? (1 replies):What could this right lower lobe mass be, if not cancer?...[more]
-
Mass In Lung - Doctors Puzzled (16 replies):I’m a 50-year-old female and sometime near the end of ...[more]
-
WHY ARE THE DOCTORS STILL CONFUSEDIn late July 2007, I started developing a ugly yeast (Ca...[more]
-
Can stable and new masses be cancer?I had a ct scan done last week due to extreme rib and st...[more]
-
Highly suspicious malignant malignant mass in upper righ...Hi My sister had been having trouble breathing for a wh...[more]
-
Concerned about mass in left hemi diaphragm (1 replies):Hi, I am a 35 year old female in good health. While ha...[more]
-
Calcified MassFor a few months now, I've been having problems with a r...[more]
Post Comment
Related Communities
Recent Videos
Related Expert Forums
Recent Activity
Most Popular Trackers
RSS
Expert Activity
Community Members
Most Viewed Health Pages
Popular Groups
I hope this helps.
If your timeline is correct - while you say they found nothing wrong with the lungs on the X-ray, you are not sure if there weren't any changes in the lung that were attributed with heart disease. If the heart is functioning poorly, the lungs may appear more white because of increased pressure of the blood within the lungs. It is possible to miss a mass in this setting and the lungs will of course be declared as normal.
The odds of a mass being benign or malignant is difficult to ascertain without any description of the mass. At the most, only her age can be used to estimate risk of malignancy. More than half of lung cancers occur after age 50 and the median age seems to be 70 in this group. But ultimately, we do need the biopsy.
Perhaps the next logical step is to do a CT scan in order to explore if it is possible to do a biopsy through the chest wall, or if it would be better to insert a scope to obtain the specimen.
Stay positive and discuss your concerns with your doctor/s.
If the valve replacement was on the left side of the heart, then the scenario I introduced in the last post becomes more likely. In which, the lungs may appear more white and hence a mass may be missed.
From your current post, if the right lung has collapsed - the X-ray appearance of this would be similar to a mass, (though there are details that would distinguish the two, but as I said earlier- X-rays in elderly patients are somewhat more difficult to read). Should this be the case - there may be no mass at all.
Stay positive.