Where does your biopsy go?
A biopsy has a journey before the final result reaches the chart.
A biopsy's journey doesn't end when the procedure does. A pathologist examines the tissue and reports the findings to your care team. Which report term should we unpack next: grade or margin?
A biopsy does not go straight from the procedure room to a diagnosis. The specimen is received, processed, embedded, cut into thin sections, stained and placed on slides for examination. Each step helps preserve the tissue and the information it carries. The pathologist then interprets the slides and reports what the findings mean in context. This short reel follows that journey from specimen to slide. It is an educational overview, not personal medical advice.
Photo credits and sources
Photos: Ed Uthman, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons. We cropped the images for the reel. The adapted photos are shared under the same license: CC BY-SA 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/).
Sources:
- https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Tissue_processing_-_Moulds_are_set_on_a_cold_plate_to_solidify.jpg
- https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Tissue_processing_-_Solid_paraffin_block_is_mounted_on_the_tissue_holder_of_a_microtome.jpg
- https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Tissue_processing_-_Stained_and_mounted_slides_in_the_ubiquitous_20-slide_folder.jpg