A diagnosable coin lesion

Our plain-English summary of A diagnosable coin lesion, by L. Goodman (Chest, 1976).

The study

• Author: L. Goodman
• Journal: Chest
• Published: 1976;70(03):405-6
• Type of article: Case report
• Cited by: 2 articles, as counted by NIH iCite
• Read it: PubMed · Publisher

In plain English

This "Roentgenogram of the Month" article was a case report of one patient, a 30-year-old white woman who had a routine chest x-ray six weeks after the birth of her first child. She had no history of prior heart or lung disease. Her physical examination, routine blood tests and chorionic gonadotrophin levels were normal. The x-ray showed a round, sharply outlined nodule 2 cm across near the right hilum, lying where the lung's major and minor fissures meet. A chest film taken one and a half years earlier at another institution had been read as normal, but on review it showed a 7 mm nodule in the same area. Before surgery, a mesothelioma was considered the most likely diagnosis. A smooth, benign fibrous mesothelioma of the major fissure was removed at surgery. The article does not mention asbestos or any other exposure. The author wrote that a tumor in a fissure is difficult to diagnose unless the fissure itself is seen.

We wrote this plain-English summary from the full article with the help of AI, and a second AI model checked each sentence against the article. It is not the authors' wording; the abstract and the article are their own account.

What the study did and found

• Design: case report (single patient, presented in a journal's 'Roentgenogram of the Month' feature)
• Who was studied: One 30-year-old white woman who had a routine chest x-ray six weeks after delivering her first child; the author is from the Department of Radiology, David Grant Medical Center, Travis Air Force Base, California
• Exposure: No asbestos or other exposure is reported in the article
• Main results:
  • The patient had no history of prior cardiac or pulmonary disease, and her physical examination, routine blood tests and chorionic gonadotrophin levels were normal
  • The current chest x-ray showed a round, sharply marginated right parahilar nodule 2 cm in diameter, lying at the junction of the major and minor fissures
  • A chest film taken one and a half years earlier at another institution had been interpreted as normal, but on review it showed a 7 mm right parahilar nodule
  • Before surgery, mesothelioma was considered the most likely diagnosis
  • A smooth, circumscribed, benign fibrous mesothelioma of the major fissure was removed at surgery
• The authors' conclusion: The author gave the diagnosis as intrafissural mesothelioma and wrote that a tumor in a fissure is difficult to diagnose unless the fissure itself is seen

Topics

The National Library of Medicine indexes this study under subjects our site covers: Mesothelioma.

Related studies

• Diffuse epithelial pleural mesothelioma presenting as a solitary lung mass — M.H. Gotfried, S.F. Quan, et al. (1983)
• Solitary pulmonary nodule in a patient without asbestos exposure — J.F. Turner, C. Gronbeck, et al. (1992)
• External validation and recalibration of the Brock model to predict probability of cancer in pulmonary nodules using NLST data — A. Winter, D.R. Aberle, et al. (2019)
• Solitary pulmonary nodule malignancy predictive models applicable to routine clinical practice: a systematic review — M. Senent-Valero, J. Librero, et al. (2021)
• Primary pulmonary meningiomas: report of two cases and review of the literature — D. Han, H. Deng, et al. (2020)
• Malignant mesothelioma presenting as a solitary perifissural nodule — L. Mo, B. Adler, et al. (2020)

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