Narrow Band Imaging During Laryngoscopy: How Can Patients Benefit? (2022 AMW)
2022 AAO-HNSF Annual Meeting & OTO Experience
Endoscopic visualization is essential in the diagnosis of laryngeal and pharyngeal lesions. Narrow Band Imaging (NBI) is a relatively new digital imaging technique is already available as a standard option on both flexible and rigid endoscopes. NBI accentuates abnormalities in the superficial vasculature of mucosal lesions. The NBI technique uses blue light (415 nm) and green light (540 nm) by applying a narrow bandwidth filter which allows an optimal visualization of superficial epithelial vessels. In this way, NBI enhances visualization of vascular changes associated with early-stage (pre)malignant lesions. An increasing number of studies showed that NBI could help the general otolaryngologist to discriminate benign from (pre)malignant lesions. Also in head and neck oncology, studies have shown that NBI is superior to white-light imaging (WLI) in detection of cancer: higher accuracy (> 90%) was found using NBI compared with WLI alone (39% - 90%). Moreover, NBI in transoral laser surgery for laryngeal carcinoma seems to be related to superior outcome. In conclusion, NBI could be very helpful in general otolaryngology and head-neck oncology. However, most ENT-surgeons are not familiar with the proper use of NBI, since NBI needs another mind set and endoscopy technique: they are used to make decisions based standard images of the normal visible light spectrum (i.e. 390-700 nm). Interpretation of (near contact) Narrow Band Images should be trained to recognize the meaning of NBI-detected differences in blood vessels and architecture of the altered mucosa. This one hour course aims to focus on all above mentioned subjects and improve the knowledge of participants on the use of NBI in clinical practice.
Credits
CME:1.0, MOC:1.0