Many thanks to the splendid team at King’s, and specially to Dr C, Nurse M from the Philippines, Nurse S from New Zealand, Nurse M from Sierra Leone and Nurse P from Nigeria.
The procedure takes about an hour and a quarter, including preliminary CT scan, injection with dye, giving local anaesthetic, and finally, taking the samples. The biopsy needle is hollow, with a solid rod in the middle. When the needle is positioned so that the end is in the abnormality, the rod is withdrawn and replaced by an 18-gauge tube (1.2 mm diameter), into which a sample of 10-20 mm is drawn.
Afterwards the patient has to lie still for 3 hours and an X-ray is taken, particularly to look for pneumo-thorax, pockets of air at the site of the biopsy which may lead to collapsed lung. On this occasion Dr C said there was a small pneumothorax, but he didn’t think a further stay in hospital was needed. So it was, as expected, just over 6 hours total at King’s.
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