Nowadays, patients with lung nodules increase significantly with the help of computer tomography (CT) screening, including some with early lung cancer. So how to establish early diagnosis of the surrounding lung nodules became concern of both clinicians and patients. However, nidus like surrounding nodules or early tumor is often far away or small, diagnosis often become "blind spots".

Under the lead of our hospital president Shenglin Ma, the intra-provincial first lung nodules joint outpatient service was opened in 2014. And on the October 20, the intra-provincial first electromagnetic navigation bronchoscopy (ENB) arrive at our hospital. ENB technology can precisely target peripheral lung small lesions to help for a definitive pathological diagnosis. Thus it can achieve diagnosis with "no dead Angle" while minimally invasive. ENB likes a bronchoscope with a GPS navigation, which can reach the the depths of the lung lesions where other diagnostic techniques can't touch. Before the examination of ENB, patients need to perform a high resolution CT scan. It helps to make a pulmonary navigation map through the computer simulation technology. After the ‘map’ is imported into the system, the sensor in front of the catheter can emit signal to the three poles set on the patients chest and electromagnetic positioning plate under the patients. Under the guidance of probe with ‘GPS’, the catheter of the bronchoscope can be externally controlled. It can arbitrarily change directions according to the lumen, thus catheter will be precisely guided to reach the lesion site. After the pathological tissue biopsy, a clear property of nodules can be established in half to an hour. In addition, ENB techonology can also flag tumor location to provide support for the subsequent radiotherapy. ENB can also be applied to the radiofrequency ablation of pulmonary lesions. The diagnostic rate of ENB is more than 80% for peripheral lesions, far ahead of other existing methods for diagnosis. It has high diagnostic rate with minimally invasion. The diagnosed rate of peripheral lesions can even be reached 88% when ENB is combined with EBUS - TBNA technology.

At present, our hospital has pioneered the use of these two technologies in the province. On October 20, the first ENB surgery was successfully completed by respiratory department under the guide of a American expert William s.krimsky and a Shanghai expert Ye Gu, which marks that our diagnosis and treatment level for early lung cancer go a further step and is at forefront of the country.