A study on a new technique in the endoscopical diagnosis of malignant and non-malignant lung diseases evaluated the use of transbronchial lung biopsy (TBB) by cryotechnique for the diagnosis of non-neoplastic lung diseases.
Although the authors found encouraging results about cryobiopsy, the findings are not sufficient for establishing transbronchial cryobiopsy as a standard method for assessing pulmonary fibrosis. However, the cryobiopsy with a greater sample size may be used to distinguish between hypersensitivity pneumonitis (HP) with usual interstitial pneumonia (UIP) pattern and idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) as well as to recognize granulomas or other specific histopathological parameters.
