London Bridge Hospital, part of HCA UK, first private hospital in Europe to offer robotic assisted lung biopsy to patients

HCA Healthcare UK recently launches its new state-of-the-art Ion Endoluminal System (Ion), which could help transform early diagnosis of suspected lung cancer. Based at London Bridge Hospital, they are the first hospital in Europe, outside of ongoing clinical studies, to offer the robotic-assisted technology.

One-stop service for patients

Lung cancer is the most common cause of cancer death in the UK1 and more than two-thirds of cases are diagnosed at a late stage of progression.2 In addition, lung nodules are also often found in patients with other types of cancer that spread to the lungs, which makes accurate and prompt diagnosis essential to optimising their care.

In the past treatment pathways would often require a ‘watch and wait’ period which could last for months, leaving patients with the stress of not knowing whether their lung nodule is cancerous or not. If a clinician finds a small mass or nodule on a patient’s lung, they may recommend a lung biopsy to determine a cancer diagnosis. Ion is a new system used to perform robotic-assisted bronchoscopy – which enables a lung biopsy.

Operated by specialists at London Bridge Hospital, Ion’s thin and manoeuvrable catheter enables clinicians to reach small nodules in all 18 segments of the lung, offering greater precision and accuracy compared to existing manual bronchoscopy techniques.

Benefits of Ion

“The Ion robotic navigational bronchoscopy system is unique and advanced compared with what we have available so far in assessing lung nodules and other parenchymal abnormalities in the lung. The revolutionary aspect of it is precision, stability and ability to accurately sample targets in the lung, that can be as small as less than one centimetre in size in the periphery of the lungs,” says Professor George Santis, Consultant Respiratory Physician at London Bridge Hospital. He added: “This truly is revolutionary because up until now, we had to rely on conventional bronchoscopy on relatively imperfect navigation systems. To us, the Ion navigation system will revolutionise the way we manage lung nodules in the context of not only lung cancer, but other cancers as well.”

How does it work?

“What we have set up here at London Bridge Hospital is a multi-system approach to the sampling of these modules. In order to optimise the Ion navigation system, we'll combine it with on-site Cone Beam CT for accurate localisation and EBUS, which we routinely do now to provide staging of mediastinal lymph nodes if necessary. We'll have a consultant pathologist present in the room and we'll be able to assess our samples in real time. And in as many as 90% of cases we can provide diagnostic information on site, which will be hugely advantageous in informing patients and managing their condition,” says Professor Santis.

“There are innovative technologies inside this [Ion] box that make it very new and allow us to offer a very different service from anything that's been available previously. And really the heart of this is what's called ‘shape-sensing technology’. The bronchoscope is a three-dimensional endoscope, but unlike any other endoscope, it is embedded with a fibre optic cable that knows exactly what the three-dimensional shape of the scope is. And that means combined with a CT scan data we know exactly where the tip of the scope is inside the patient - that data is updated many times a second, and is accurate to within a fraction of a millimetre. It's really this shape sensing technology that is unique to this and allows us to offer the level of precision and diagnostic accuracy, which is really unprecedented in this area of medicine.”

To find out more about London Bridge Hospital’s Ion offering, visit https://www.hcahealthcare.co.uk/facilities/london-bridge-hospital/specialist-units/lung-nodule-clinic

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References

1.???? Cancer Research UK. Lung Cancer Mortality. Available at: https://www.cancerresearchuk.org/health-professional/cancer-statistics/statistics-by-cancer-type/lung-cancer#heading-One Last accessed: August 2023

2.???? Cancer Research UK. Proportion of Cancer Cases By Stage at Diagnosis, 2020. Available at: https://crukcancerintelligence.shinyapps.io/EarlyDiagnosis/ Last accessed: August 2023