Metastatic lesions to bones but 2 negative lung biopsies? - 1256874

savino47
Posts:5

Hi everyone

After a few months of severe pain, my mom was found to have metastatic lesions on her spine and sacrum. A catscan revealed a spot on her lung. They have now done 2 broncosopy biopsies which have both come back negative. We are waiting on results for a 3rd. She's done 5 rounds of radiation to shrink the bone tumors and to try a reduce pain. She's on painkillers.

My questions is: is it normal to have 2 negative biopsies? The dr's say it really looks like lung cancer and the places it's metastized to are consistent with what lung cancer does.

What would you suggest we ask the dr's to look at if the 3rd biopsy also comes back negative? They are thinking of doing a biopsy of the bone mets next...

Any thoughts?

Thanks!

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Reply # - May 30, 2013, 12:39 PM

Dr West
Posts: 4735

It's unusual, though it can certainly happen. Having a first diagnostic biopsy is pretty common, so having that happen again can also happen, just not as often.

Biopsying a bone lesion is a possibility, but if the biopsy of the lung lesion has only been a fine needle aspirate (FNA), having a "core biopsy" done would increase the chance of getting a result sufficient to get a conclusive result. In some cases, surgeons even resort to taking out the whole nodule just to get a definitive answer, especially if it could be done as a wedge resection through a minimally invasive VATS (video-assisted thoracoscopic surgery) procedure.

Good luck.

-Dr. West

Reply # - June 1, 2013, 04:58 AM

savino47
Posts: 5

3rd biopsy came back positive for adenocarcinoma. So treatment phase begins.
Any information here from anyone with bone mets - no spread elsewhere - with adenocarcinoma on survival rates? personal experiences. my mom is in pain daily and on pain meds. Wondering beyond the googlable stats what experiences there are out there of folks surviving this.
Thanks!

Reply # - June 1, 2013, 06:53 AM

catdander
Posts:

savino, I'm very sorry about the confirmation of your mom's cancer. There is no way of saying how long she has. The mean time of survival is around a year though that means out of thousands of people half live shorter half live longer. There are many who live several years out from diagnosis. The individual biology of your mom's cancer will determine how well it can respond to anti cancer treatment and how aggressive or indolent it is. Unfortunately the only way to know is time. Time to have and second and more scans to compare with the first.

Here are couple of posts that will help,
http://cancergrace.org/lung/2010/04/05/an-introduction-to-lung-cancer/
http://cancergrace.org/lung/2010/04/16/introduction-to-first-line-thera…
http://cancergrace.org/lung/2010/10/10/overview-of-molecular-markers-in…

Please let us help with questions moving forward and look around the site for information, there is quite a good library in addition to the 3 blog posts I linked to above.

Janine
forum moderator

Reply # - June 1, 2013, 03:55 PM

Dr West
Posts: 4735

Janine's info is really the best place to start. The stats are great for telling how a population of people will do, but they don't say what we will see for a particular individual.

There isn't a real distinction of prognosis based on metastatic spread to bone only vs. to adrenal glands, liver, etc.

Please let us know if you have specific follow-up questions after checking out the more general info Janine suggested.

-Dr. West

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