North Iowa hospital offering new cancer detection technology

MASON CITY, Iowa. (KTTC) – MercyOne North Iowa Medical Center is the first in the region to offer a robotic-assisted lung biopsy.

Official response and confirmed impact

A typical lung biopsy to diagnose the cancer uses a bronchoscope to navigate the lung’s outer third.

MercyOne experts explained this area has many tight spaces that a traditional bronchoscope cannot easily reach.

Typically, physicians would insert a needle through the outside of the patient’s chest and navigate using live CT imaging.

This procedure was associated with many complications however, including the lung potentially collapsing.

The new Ion software is minimally invasive as it gives physicians a real-time, 3D view of a person’s airway, generated from a CT scan.

The software maps a pathway to a suspicious lung nodule.

Iowa has one of the highest cancer rates in the U.S. with lung cancer being the leading cause of cancer deaths.