Impact of Metabolic Activity Driving Precision in Diagnostic Bronchoscopy with Dr. Steven Kovacs

Lung cancer remains the most lethal cancer worldwide, and traditional biopsy approaches still leave critical gaps. In this episode, interventional pulmonologist Dr. Steven Kovacs shares how real-time metabolic imaging inside the bronchoscopy suite is transforming how clinicians assess biopsy adequacy.

Episode Breakdown

00:00 – Opening remarks: the challenge of lung cancer diagnosis

01:17 – Introducing Dr. Steven Kovacs

02:11 – Journey through bronchoscopy: from navigation to robotics

05:11 – The problem with current biopsy yields and ROSE

07:29 – Why imaging tool-in-lesion is not enough

09:59 – Metabolic activity as a new “PET scan for cells”

12:16 – How dynamic cell imaging works in real time

14:45 – Preserving tissue for pathology and sequencing

17:15 – Differentiating inflammation, necrosis, and malignancy in the same lesion

19:37 – Case studies: when pathology said “negative,” but malignancy was present

22:01 – Adequacy as a clinical responsibility, not just pathology’s burden

24:07 – The future of bronchoscopy workflows and precision medicine

27:32 – Audience Q&A: diagnostic adequacy and workflow efficiency

30:52 – Audience Q&A: reducing procedure time and anesthesia costs

34:41 – Audience Q&A: handling tissue and specimen prep

38:18 – Audience Q&A: impact on indeterminate biopsies

43:12 – Audience Q&A: adequacy for NGS and downstream testing

47:20 – Hospital administration and value analysis: time savings and cost impact

50:05 – Surgical use cases and margin evaluation

52:25 – Adoption and workflow integration: overcoming learning curves

53:32 – Closing thanks and replay reminder

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