Efficacy and safety of cryobiopsy versus forceps biopsy in lung allograft recipients: a single-center analysis

Endoscopic surveillance with transbronchial biopsy in lung transplant (LTx) is crucial, since an early diagnosis of acute cellular rejection (AR) can affect long term survival. Histological diagnosis of AR is usually obtained using transbronchial forceps biopsy (FB). In recent years, transbronchial cryobiopsy (CB) has been increasingly used, as it obtains larger samples than FB, without crush artefacts. Few studies have compared the two methods in terms of diagnostic accuracy and safety. The aim of this study is to assess the diagnostic yield and safety of CB in comparison with FB, for sampling lung tissue in transplant recipients