Situation

A patient presents with pneumonia. An abnormal CXR prompts a CT scan of the chest. This reveals a nodule in the LUL and multiple small lymph nodes in the mediastinum. What would be the role of PET scanning here ? What would you do ?

Opinion

Opinion

PET scanning would be useless as their has been recent infection potentially producing a false positive. A needle biopsy to avoid operating on a small cell carcinoma and maybe a mediasteinoscopy should be considered. However some surgeons may just go straight to thoracotomy.