Diagnostics of intrapulmonary metastases from colorectal cancer (literature survey)

The colon cancer is on the first place as etiologic cause for performing pulmonary resection due to pulmonary metastases. The low effectiveness of chemotherapy in case of metastatic progression from colorectal carcinoma is established. Accordingly, the surgical resection is commonly accepted as the only potential therapeutic option. In favour of the good results from surgical treatment is the trend of earlier finding of pulmonary metastases. The metastases diagnostics has important meaning for differentiation from other lung diseases and for the choice of the therapeutic method. The benefits and disadvantages of non-invasive (chest X-ray, CT, lung perfusion scintigraphy, PET and PET/CT, tumor markers) and invasive (bronchoscopy, mediastinoscopy, VATS (video-assisted thoracic surgery, TTNB (trans-thoracic needle biopsy)) methods for diagnosis of intrapulmonary metastases are analyzed.