Jody Pica Is Walking Proud After Lung Cancer

The year 2024 was no picnic for Jody Pica, 68. An avid walker who spent at least an hour each day trekking near her home in Scranton, she was stopped in her tracks when diagnosed with colon cancer in June. In a routine computed tomography (CT) scan to make sure the disease hadn't spread to other parts of her body, a nodule was found on her lung.

Fortunately, Pica’s daughter-in-law, Hope Johnson, Vice President of Perioperative Services at Lehigh Valley Health Network (LVHN), recommended LVHN’s Lung Nodule Clinic. It was there that Pica met Daniel Schwed-Lustgarten, MD, Associate Chief, Pulmonary Medicine. He explained the next step for Pica was a biopsy using LVHN’s advanced Ion system, which would determine whether the lung nodule was cancerous.

Familiar with robotic-assisted surgery because she had a career in health care prior to retiring, Pica chose this method over the traditional one. During a traditional, or transthoracic needle biopsy, clinicians pass a needle through the skin, into the lung and to the lesion to obtain a cell sample. While this method is accurate, it has a higher complication rate.

A biopsy with the Ion robotic-assisted system is different. Using a high-definition map of the patient’s airway, a clinician-controlled robotic arm guides the bronchoscope – a very thin tube equipped with a camera – through the airways to get directly into the problem area.

“We can see the blood vessels around the lesion and know exactly how close we are to the lining of the lungs,” Dr. Schwed-Lustgarten says. “Doing the procedure from the inside doesn’t affect the lining of the lung, which is one of the main reasons complications can occur.”

He further explains that Ion allows clinicians to diagnose and conduct mediastinal lymph node staging at the same time. “Identifying a cancer stage is critical in determining how to treat it,” he says. The traditional method requires a biopsy of the nodule. If it’s cancerous, another procedure is performed to see if the cancer has spread to the lymph nodes. “When it’s robotic, it’s all compressed into a single procedure, and you go under anesthesia one time. It’s safer and it reduces time to treatment,” he says.

Since a robotic-assisted bronchoscopy takes on average about 25 minutes, Pica was able to return home the same day as her procedure. “I felt very good; I had no recovery whatsoever,” she says. “I got the results within 24 hours.”

Pica’s results were stage 1 lung cancer. She again discussed her options with her LVHN clinicians, consisting of a multidisciplinary team of thoracic and colorectal surgeons. Together they decided her colon cancer would be treated first. That would be followed by a resection of her lung and six months of chemotherapy. Once completed, the lung resection is considered curative for lung cancer. Pica went to Dale and Frances Hughes Cancer Center, a member of the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Alliance, at Lehigh Valley Hospital–Pocono, for all her cancer care. 

“I can’t rave enough about the hospital,” she says. “Everything was immaculately clean, and everyone was very friendly and helpful. Dr. Schwed-Lustgarten was just so calm and comforting. I felt very comfortable that we were doing what needed to be done – to get me back out there and enjoy my life.”