The role of transbronchial cryobiopsy in lung transplantation

Aims: Lung transplant monitoring is usually performed with forceps transbronchial biopsies. These types of biopsy show limited reliability and a high degree of variability, owing to insufficient material and compression artefact, which lead to misinterpretation and, eventually, inappropriate treatment of the transplanted patients. The following study was undertaken to assess the diagnostic yield, histological quality and safety of cryobiopsy (CB) in comparison with conventional forceps biopsy (FB) for sampling lung tissue in transplant recipients.

Methods and results: From January to December 2011, 81 consecutive transbronchial biopsies (41 FBs and 40 CBs) were indicated in single or bilateral lung transplantation recipients with clinical acute or chronic lung injury. Lung samples obtained by CB were larger (8.5 ± 6.5 mm in the FB group versus 22.1 ± 12.5 mm in the CB group; P < 0.0001) and had no crush artefacts (P = 0.002), allowing us to increase the diagnostic yield of acute (P = 0.0657) and chronic (P = 0.0053) cellular rejection.

Discussion: Transbronchial cryoprobe bronchoscopy allows the harvesting of larger and more expanded lung tissue samples, increasing the diagnostic yield in the monitoring of the lung allograft by means of a safe procedure.