Hydro-marking Your Territory: Using a Novel Percutaneous Tagging System to Assist Pulmonary Nodule Identification During Video-assisted Thoracoscopic Surgery

The management of lung cancer is highly dependent on surgical resection. There are different surgical managements that are utilized on a patient to patient basis. Small lung nodules are particularly difficult to resect and have a higher postoperative complication rate. Video-assisted thoracoscopic surgery is the preferred method of surgery over open thoracotomy, but requires the preoperative percutaneous placement of a marker to help the surgeon identify the nodule once conducting surgical resection. There are various methods to place percutaneous markers, but have reported complications. The following case will present the novel placement of a hydrogel tagging system on a small pulmonary nodule, demonstrating superiority to other methods of percutaneous marker placement.