Staci Beamer, M.D., on Pope Leo's lung cancer surgery | CHEST 2026

Pope Leo XIV's surgery for early-stage lung cancer earlier this month offers a window into how pathology and treatment can be combined into a single procedure, according to Staci E. Beamer, M.D.

In an interview at the 2026 CHEST meeting earlier this week, Beamer, a thoracic surgeon at HonorHealth in Arizona, described the pope's operation as a single-stage event, in which a lung nodule is biopsied, pathology reviews the tissue while the patient is still in the operating room, and, once lung cancer is confirmed, the surgeon proceeds directly to resection. Thoracic surgeons refer to this as a single anesthetic event.

Not every center has the capability to offer this kind of combined procedure, Beamer said. It requires the operating room time multidisciplinary teams, including pathology, to come together in one place at the same time.

"But here in the U.S. it is possible. It's just something that I think we, as a specialty, are working on for patients," Beamer said. Part of that work involves identifying the system limitations that keep hospitals from offering a single-stage approach, she added, noting that every institution faces its own unique challenges.

The pope underwent surgery on Oct. 13 at Gemelli Hospital in Rome after a nodule was discovered. Surgeons removed the lower lobe of his right lung. A statement from his doctors posted by the Holy See said that “to ensure a radical procedure, the lower lobe of the right lung was removed using a video-assisted technique. The intraoperative histological examination confirmed the diagnosis of lung adenocarcinoma, as suspected by the preoperative tests.”

The statement said that the pope was in the operating theater for approximately three hours and that the operation itself lasted approximately 90 minutes.

On Oct. 21, the Vatican News, Holy See’s news portal, reported that the pope’s doctors said that he needed no further treatment.