Lung Opacity seen on Chest CT scan

Posted by ncteacher @ncteacher, Jan 4 8:05am

I had CTs of the chest and abdomen Wednesday (1/3). The abdomen report looks good. The radiologist said there are no new issues, and the main tumor appears to have shrunk again. That would correlate with my most recent CA 19-9 result, which was 25.

The report on the chest CT shows a new ground-glass opacity (0.6 mm) and a few new very small opacities all on the right lung. I'm seeing my oncologist today, and of course we'll talk about this. A google search shows that these can be cancer-related (everything I read specified lung cancer, not pancreatic metastases). But the opacities can also be benign and related to other non-cancer issues. Have any of you had these identified on your CT scans? If so, how are you and your medical team approaching them? Thanks in advance for any info you can provide.

Interested in more discussions like this? Go to the Pancreatic Cancer Support Group.

Colleen Young, Connect Director | @colleenyoung | Jan 13 2:31pm

Hi @ncteacher, ground glass opacity is often talked about in the Lung Health and Lung Cancer support groups as well as other lung-related discussions. See a list of discussions here https://connect.mayoclinic.org/search/discussions/?search=ground+glass

Did you discuss the CT scan with your oncologist? What did you learn?

ncteacher | @ncteacher | Jan 13 2:53pm

In reply to @colleenyoung "Hi @ncteacher, ground glass opacity is often talked about in the Lung Health and Lung Cancer..." + (show)

We did discuss the scan with my oncologist. He and the oncology fellow who reviewed the scan after the radiologist are sort of unconcerned. That is, they'll look at our next scan (April? not set yet) and compare to see how things stand. But right now, they're not too worried, and we're not doing anything about the opacity. They both asked whether I'd had a cold or viral infection; apparently those can cause ground glass opacity on scans. The only thing I could think of is that I had an RSV vaccination just after Thanksgiving, which would have been about two weeks before the CT. But I can't find anything online about any connection between Arexvy and the CT image. And that's not a live vaccine anyway. My CA 19-9 number remains in normal range, which is reassuring, since it suggests that the cancer activity has definitely slowed. Oh yeah, I also mentioned that I likely had covid back in 2020; it's not official on my records, but every MD who looks at my chart says, "Yep, covid." But no previous scans showed the ground glass opacity, so odds are it isn't from covid.

I'll scoot over to the link you provided and see what I can glean from it. Thanks for the help!