To investigate whether our new-developed "thrombin blocking" technique in elderly patients can reduce incidence of pneumothorax and hemoptysis when combined with co-axial technique.

From Jan 2014 to Dec 2016, we studied 118 elderly patients CT-guided percutaneous lung biopsy using co-axial and thrombin blocking techniques. These patients were randomly divided into thrombin blocking group (60 cases) and conventional coaxial group (58 cases), researching positive rate and complication rate.

The positive rate of diagnosis was 95% with 57 malignant lesions cases and 3 undetermined case in thrombin blocking group, and the complication rate was 8.3%, 4 cases (6.7%) happened pneumothorax (all were mild pneumothorax), bleedingduring biopsy happened in 1 case (1.7%). The positive rate of diagnosis was 86.2% with 50 malignant lesions cases and 8 undetermined case in conventional coaxial group, and the complication rate was 25.8%, 9 cases (15.5%)happened pneumothorax (7 were mild and 2 were moderate), bleedingduring biopsy happened in 6 (10.3%) case (5 cases with a small amount of hemoptysis and 1 case with 50ml of hemoptysis). No infection, tumor implantation or aeroembolism happened. There was no significant difference in the positive rate of diagnosis between the two groups (χ²=0.253, P>0.05), and the difference in the incidence of complication rate was statistically significant (χ²=5.221, P<0.05).

CT-guided percutaneous lung biopsy using co-axial and thrombin blocking is an accurate, safe, reliable technique for elder patients. The complications of pneumothorax and hemoptysis in elder patients were significantly reduced.