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There’s a medical term for an unanticipated finding unrelated to the original medical inquiry; it’s called an “incidentaloma.”

If we are more concerned about your incidentaloma, we may decide to do a lung biopsy, in which we stick a needle directly into the lung to get a tissue sample for evaluation.

But their discovery can lead to extensive downstream testing, worry and potential morbidity, as we doctors start poking and prodding you, wanting to assure ourselves that the incidentaloma is indeed nothing.

But the scan it does show a little something of which I’m not exactly sure—a possible nodule, or what we physicians refer to as an “incidentaloma.”

Doctors dub this the dreaded "incidentaloma" -- so-called incidental findings that tell people more than they bargained for, things they might not need or want to know.