Search

Competing Interests: Disclosure: There is no conflict of interest or other disclosures.

Malignant central airway obstruction is a life-threatening condition that often causes respiratory failure. In many cases, treatment of tumor in rigid bronchoscopy must be performed urgently, soothing respiratory symptoms and improving patient quality of life, in many cases reducing time to and allowing application of oncologic therapies. Immuno-oncologic therapies target the immune system selectively and are therefore much less toxic than standard chemotherapies, sometimes leading to outstanding results in advanced cancers for which there were no effective treatments until a few years ago. This report shows the effect of the joint application of rigid bronchoscopy and targeted immunotherapy in an emergency scenario, resulting in an unexpected extraordinary therapeutic success.

Key message: Conventional transbronchial needle aspiration (cTBNA) remains a basic technique that must be part of the bronchoscopists expertise. In cases where EBUS is not available, cTBNA must be kept in mind: 'the old bull knows best'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pulmonary hamartomas represent the most frequent family of benign lung tumors that typically involve the lung parenchyma and only rarely grow as endobronchial tumors. The elective treatment of endobronchial hamartoma is the bronchoscopic resection, and in those cases in which tumor extension and localization makes it not possible, surgical treatment must be evaluated. Patients with symptomatic COVID-19, hospitalized, frequently undergo a chest CT scan and in some cases, occasional findings may emerge, requiring diagnostic investigations such as bronchoscopy and interventional pulmonology procedures. Therefore, in such a delicate pathological condition, such as COVID-19, the need to perform bronchoscopy and interventional pulmonology procedures, minimizing the risk of viral transmission and ensuring necessary assistance, represents a great challenge for pulmonologists. In this article authors describe, for the first time in literature, a rare case of endobronchial hamartoma, radically resected using a single use bronchoscope, in a young female patient hospitalized for symptomatic COVID-19. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]