International Journal of Medical and Health Research

Flexible bronchoscopy techniques play a key role in diagnosing lung malignancies, particularly in endobronchial tumours. This study aims to assess the diagnostic yield of bronchoscopic biopsy and bronchial washing in endoscopically visible lung malignancies. Patients with endobronchial mass who had a definite cytological or histological diagnosis of lung cancer were included in the study. Of the 924 bronchoscopies conducted between June 2014 to May 2016, 95 had endobronchial mass lesions, out of which 73 were malignant. The individual diagnostic yields of biopsy and washing were 97.3% and 2.7% respectively. Cytology based sampling techniques by means of bronchial washing did not increase the diagnostic yield when compared to biopsy alone.