Granuloma - 1247163

Hi lcali, it's good to know your 18 months off tarceva. I think the difference of 2 mm isn't very likely to be convincing of a growing nodule. I hope it isn't.
Janine

Here is an excellent blog post that describes how a couple of mm may not mean as much as the worry it causes.

http://cancergrace.org/lung/2011/08/09/limits-of-ct-scanning/

We prefer to see no progression, and the general wisdom is that a nodule that is stable for 2 years is considered to be benign. In truth, it's not quite that simple, as we've occasionally seen nodules that were stable for 2+ years but subsequently grew and turned out to be cancer. Even so, most of those are cancers in name, but not necessarily truly threatening, at least not likely to be over the next 10+ years.

Though it's hard to get our heads around the idea, there are some lung cancers that are so slowly growing that I would say that their probability of impacting survival is actually pretty low. These are generally the ones you can't convince yourself have grown over a year or two.

-Dr. West