Lung nodules and scarring
I am 6 years out from treatment and have been NED. my RO gets a chest ct yearly (I understand this is not standard of care). He goes over the scan with me every year but it goes to our radiology group for the official read. Year 5 he notices what he says is scarring in my right lower lung, in comparison to the previous year it had increased. So we decided to do one more this year. He found a new, small 2mm nodule in the left lung and new scarring in the left lung as well. My concern is that the lung scarring was not mentioned in the official read. I work at this health system and our radiology group is sub par and my RO even said “you know how our group is, they might not even mention any of this” I asked him to put in a not so they would note it and he said he could but it probably wouldn’t make a difference. With that being said here is my report
I have yet to have a follow up from this with my MO but she says the only time metastatic disease is hard to see with lobular is when it is in the stomach. She said any other site would be seen on imaging. I am wondering if I should somehow get a second opinion on my imaging. I realize I can have health anxiety after having cancer but I just want a definitive answer. Also to note I have had a lymph node in my abdomen that has been intermittently painful, but they said “I wouldn’t worry about a lymph node in the abdomen”. Am I just being hyper vigilant?
Comments
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Hi @dani444, If you have questions about your chest CTs it might be worth having a specialist pulmonary radiologist read all the scans together so any changes are clear. There is always some difference in what gets mentioned but I live in a rural area where the radiology group is also subpar. The group is hired by the small hospital so there is no oversight or quality control. I appreciate that it is more challenging to read every type of scan for all organs. However, so much has been missed that I take CDs of any imaging done locally to my doctors at a bigger hospital where I travel for anything out of the ordinary.
Nodules and scarring can be caused by many things other than cancer such as infection and inflammation. While nodules are generally not biopsied until they grow to 10 mm, if they are increasing in size and new ones are appearing there are protocols for surveillance.
Feel free to join us on the CT and Lung Nodules thread.
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@maggie15 thank you for the response! It is so startling to me what I have seen, first hand, missed on x-rays and scans by our group. I completely understand that subtle findings can be missed but it has clouded my confidence in them when I see very obvious things omitted from reports! I am going to look into a second opinion. Has anyone here used a remote service such as Docpanel for a radiology second opinion?
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