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Lung Nodule Shrinking Quickly?

Hello,
My husband (39 Years Old)  was discovered by chance a 3 cm nodule in the lung (right upper lobe, with spicules) very suspicious according to the doctors.
From there, the earth collapses, fighting wank. With full pre-operative test. Antibiotics for a week ( doc says it’s procedure )
CT and MRI extension balance = negative. Bronchial fibroscopy with biopsy bronchial spurs + washing = normal. (Even if the nodule could not be reached). Pet scan ( 17 days after the scanner that had discovered the nodule) extremely surprising because the nodule has decreased by half! It only fixes very little (1.4 Suvmax) and no suspicious spots elsewhere.

This whole thing should reassure me, but I still wonder.

It is possible that a nodule that was originally considered malignant would actually be only benign and halved in less than 3 weeks????
Is the petscan fixation threshold really insignificant? (1,4)
All this medical language is sometimes hard to understand.
Cordially

Rose
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15695260 tn?1549593113
Hello and welcome to the forum.  This has certainly been a scary time for you and your husband and we are glad you've worked closely with his doctors.  Hopefully they can give you the final reassurance that will let you both rest easy after this.  Lung nodules are surprisingly common and certain factors trigger more concern than others when evaluating them.  Infection is a very common culprit resulting in lung nodules.  https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/317531.php  That your husband's has reduced in size is most definitely reassuring and as Chin states above, suggestive of infection rather than malignancy.  Please do confirm this with your doctor.  Please let us know!
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Thank u Sara for the answer
Avatar universal
SUV (standardized uptake value) is a semiquantitative measure of metabolic activity on PET (positron emission tomography). For pulmonary nodules, SUV max of 2.5 has traditionally been used as a rough cutoff to differentiate between benign and malignant nodules, but this is not cut and dry, as there can be overlap as well as confounding factors (e.g., image noise, low image resolution, and variable user-biased region of interest (ROI) selection, as well as patient sugar/glucose levels). Although nodules measuring greater than 1 cm with spiculated margins are suspicious, the interval decrease in size and SUV max measuring less than 2.5 are reassuring, suggesting that this was infectious rather than neoplastic.
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hello,

thank you for your answer, so if I summarize. the fact that the nodule has reduced from 3cm to 13mm and the lack of significant fixation are reassuring?

Regards

Rose
Yes, decrease in size on CT and low metabolic activity on PET are reassuring.
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