New technology is making it possible for doctors in the DMV to diagnose a patient with lung cancer and treat them by surgically removing the tumor, all in the same day.
That technology is saving lives and time, as 65-year-old Sheryl Bitsch found out when she received the kind of phone call you can never prepare for.
"I got in a car to take a trip cross-country to national parks, and I guess about a week into that trip, I got a call saying, you have something on your lung that showed up on the MRI," Bitsch said.
Bitsch was forced to cut her vacation short and fly back home to Northern Virginia for more testing. A PET scan later revealed she had lung cancer.
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"I've worked hard at staying healthy and was pretty shocked to find out that no, no, you have this little problem," she said.
It can take several weeks to diagnose, and then treat someone with surgery, for lung cancer. But for some patients, INOVA Health System can do both procedures on the same day, thanks to new cutting-edge robotic technology.
"This is a game changer in the way we treat early stage lung cancer," said Dr. Michael Weyant, the chief of thoracic surgery at INOVA. "So in one day, from start to finish, it is all taken care of."
Weyant says the approach leads to better outcomes and reduces the mental toll that comes after a cancer diagnosis.
"With this process of doing the bronchoscopy with biopsies, the lymph node staging, and the surgery all at one time, you can imagine that it saves the patient a lot of stress and a lot of anxiety," he explained. "But it also saves our healthcare system an exponential amount of funds required to do all these things where you can do it all in one setting."
Bitsch's successful biopsy and surgery took about eight hours, and she was back home the next day. Now she's back to her routine, taking her new puppy out for long walks and looking forward to more travel adventures, thanks to innovative technology.
"It was a process that was, despite the diagnosis, really painless," she said. "I'm not sure if I had to go home and think about this for weeks on end, I would have been nearly as okay with everything as I was as a result of it."
Bitsch's biopsy and surgery was done at INOVA Fairfax Hospital, covered by insurance. She is now cancer-free.
Doctors say to be eligible for the same-day diagnosis and surgery, patients need to have an identified lung nodule that has not spread anywhere else.
