Why does a biopsy take so long

You may now be wondering why there are different types of biopsy and which one is likely to be chosen for you. The answer usually has to do with the nature of breast cancer: where it is likely to be located.

This in turn determines how deep the surgeon needs to go to retrieve the tissue. Due to the precise nature of this biopsy, the surgeon will usually also require some kind of guidance which will help them get to the necessary point. For instance, they will often use a mammogram or an MRI. Where the surgeon uses a mammogram, it can be called either a mammogram-guided biopsy or a stereotactic biopsy.

Of course, the recovery time and amount of discomfort experienced is determined largely by how deep the surgeon needs to go. For breast needle biopsies, only local anesthesia will usually be necessary. This can be uncomfortable, but most patients describe it as perfectly tolerable experience does vary somewhat.

Core needle biopsies usually result in more bruising than a breast fine needle biopsy. This can take up to several weeks to fully heal, though it should feel much better a lot sooner than that.

In many cases, a surgical breast biopsy can also be performed under local anesthetic, though there will be cases where the general anesthetic is necessary. In most cases, this is still an outpatient procedure however — no overnight stay required. Again, the recovery time will be determined by the amount of bleeding, but you should find that any bleeding or bruising has cleared up after around a month. Patients should support their own recovery by getting lots of rest and sleep, eating healthily, and drinking lots of fluids.

Did they mention anything to you at the time? I had diarrhoea every single day - had it for months and do you know what caused it? Bottled Evian water! Ever since I stopped drinking it the diarrhoea stopped.

I tested it out again and it came back. I would ring them but if there was anything I don't think they would have left you this long so maybe this is a good sign.

I hope you have heard something now but if not I would urge you to call the hospital. I recently waited 3 weeks for biospy results which Docs kept insisting they hadnt recieved. When I finally called the hospital I found the reults had been sent the day after the procedure.

The originals were never located by my gp surgery and had to be resent. Chase them up and remind them that there's a worried person waiting for these potentially life-changing results. Letters and messages do sometimes go astray and NHS diagnostic services do get overwhelmed by the volume of work and the chronic lack of investment which CRUK are campaigning to put right.

Please pay no attention to well-intentioned messages saying that "no news is good news". Positive or negative results take exactly as long to come through as each other. Inconclusive results can take longer. I ended up having to contact the PALS team at the hospital and to be fair they were very helpful and got onto my case straight away.

They looked into my case and rang me back within 30 minutes. I was told that a letter had been dictated but that it was waiting to be signed off. They could not tell me what the letter said. Skip to Content. There is a member of your health care team who plays a vital role in your diagnosis and cancer care who you may never meet face to face: the pathologist. This is the doctor who analyzes the sample of tissue removed during a biopsy to make the correct diagnosis. Here are 5 things this pathologist wants every patient to know about biopsy.

Pathologists are trained to evaluate many different types of tissue. They use powerful microscopes to evaluate the cells within each tissue sample. Sometimes a biopsy sample might not be big enough to evaluate. Other times, the pathologist can see that the sample was not taken from the correct area. In these cases, the pathologist will ask your doctor to repeat the biopsy, so the pathologist can make a conclusive and accurate diagnosis.

These include shave biopsies, punch biopsies, Pap tests and cervical biopsies, and even some fine needle aspiration biopsies FNABs for the thyroid or lymph nodes. These procedures are usually fairly quick and might take 15 to 30 minutes to perform, depending on the part of the body being biopsied. Typically, the biopsy sample is then saved in a special type of preservative and sent to the pathology lab for processing.

Tissue processing takes several steps, but it starts with making sure the correct test was done on the correct patient. Depending on the type of evaluation needed, the next steps might take a few hours or several days. If your pathologist suspects certain types of cancer, such as lymphoma, he or she might need to perform additional testing to determine the subtype.

This process takes an additional 24 to 96 hours, depending on the complexity of the cancer. It can be agonizing to wait for biopsy results. But be assured that the pathologist is using his or her specialized expertise to make sure you get an accurate diagnosis. Pathologists are the caretakers of tissue samples and must exercise good judgment with them.