Needle core biopsies: ease and efficiency of processing with LUMEA BxChip

Needle core biopsies are taken to minimise patient discomfort while still gleaning essential information about a particular tissue. Organs such as prostate, breast, liver and kidney can all be studied using needle core biopsies, thus reducing the need for invasive surgery and extended hospital stays.

While these tiny biopsies are often more convenient for patients, they can create challenges for laboratories where the tissue must be processed and handled extensively. Damage may occur during manipulation with forceps, which is required at several stages of standard processing. Their delicate nature creates additional difficulties as the tissue is also prone to breaking during processing, which could lead to the loss of valuable material and vital diagnostic information. Cores that do contain tumour cells are even more susceptible, due to their high gland to stroma ratio. All of these factors mean that needle core biopsies typically consume a significant amount of time and resources.

            In order to ensure fragmented cores do not become mixed, many laboratories choose to process each needle core individually. If biopsies are processed in this way then large amounts of resources are required to produce one block for each core, resulting in a greater workload and slower turnaround times.