The waiting period for medical test results can be one marked by apprehension, even when the anticipated turnaround time is as brief as 48 hours. Wait times of weeks or even months can be agonizing.

Enter Freeman Health System pulmonologists, who can now make a precise diagnosis through a minimally invasive outpatient procedure that helps eliminate unnecessary wait times and guesswork.

Recently, Freeman Lung Institute marked its the 400^th procedure using MONARCH®, a newer technology that gives Freeman pulmonologists a better way to see inside a patient’s lungs – making it a faster, more precise tool for diagnosing and treating lung cancer. Freeman is the first and only hospital in Missouri, Southeast Kansas and Northeast Oklahoma to invest in the MONARCH Platform by Auris Health, Inc.

“We are trying to find these masses when patients don’t have symptoms yet,” said Dr. Grant Pierson, board-certified pulmonologist at Freeman Lung Institute who utilizes MONARCH. “Once symptoms appear, it’s a more advanced stage of a cancer that has either grown to a large size or spread throughout the body. So we want to find it before symptoms appear – when it’s a very small nodule. We want to biopsy it, and if the lungs can tolerate it, either have it surgically removed or even radiated so the patient can be cancer-free.”

MONARCH’s cutting-edge technology combines the latest advancements in robotic control, minimally invasive instrumentation and data science into one platform, essentially reinventing the bronchoscope, a tool used to diagnose small masses in the lungs. The masses diagnosed might be something as benign as a tiny dirt particle – or as harmful as a cancer.

Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer-related death in the United States, and early diagnosis is key to successful treatment. The problem is symptoms don’t often appear in the early stages of the disease, making that early diagnosis hard to achieve. Lung cancer can be caused by smoking, chemical exposure or radon, the latter a colorless, odorless gas common in the Four States. Radon exposure, in fact, is the second-leading cause of lung cancer.

The MONARCH robotic-assisted bronchoscope is a game-changer for patients seeking a diagnosis of a nodule in their lungs. Its novel telescoping design enables physicians to reach farther into the lungs and visualize what is being biopsied, all with impressive precision. Each component of the bronchoscope can be independently articulated, advanced, retracted and positionally locked, giving physicians greater control and maneuverability deep in the lung, where most small nodules are found. 

In other cases, masses in the lungs may be discovered when patients have an unrelated bout of chest pain, coughing or shortness of breath.

Dr. Pierson predicts that with the MONARCH Platform, biopsies will be more common for cases like these, so physicians can provide patients with solutions and well-being.

“In the future, the goal is to be able to biopsy, diagnose and treat the tumor, all within the same procedure,” said Dr. Pierson. “We could tell the patient ‘this was a cancer, but we were able to treat it, and now you’re cancer-free.’”

For more information about MONARCH or pulmonology services at Freeman, please call 417.347.8315 or visit freemanhealth.com/pulmonology.