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Breast Cancer (Expert Forum)
Biopsy followup?
Questions posted in the Breast Cancer Forum are answered by medical professionals from The Cleveland Clinic. Topics include Breast Biopsy, Chemotherapy, Hormone Therapy, Lumps, Lumpectomy, Lymph node dissection, Lymphedema, Mammograms, Mastectomy, Radiation Therapy, Reconstruction, Self Breast Exam, and Surgery.
Biopsy followup?
by J-mar, Nov 10, 2002 12:00AM
I recently had a surgical biopsy because of microcalcifiations. The surgeon called and said, "it's nothing. Don't even worry about it." I have two questions: one, I don't know if he removed all the calcifications, so I'm wondering if I should have another mammogram (as if I haven't had enough of those the past few weeks!!) to see if there are any left so that the next time I have a screening mammogram, they will know if I have new or old microcalcifications. My second question is one of the reasons I was told to have this biopsy is because the calcifications were near the chest wall. When I got the report for my screening mammogram, it said, "There are a few microcalcifications ... deep along the chest wall," referring to the breast I did NOT have the biopsy done on. They did not do a diagnostic mammogram of this breast and didn't mention anything to me about there being calcifications in that breast, too. I'm assuming this is because there were only a few calcifications and not a cluster, and therefore no reason to be concerned?
Doctor's Answer
by CCF-RN,MSN-rf, Nov 11, 2002 12:00AM
Dear j-mar: In general post biopsy mammograms are not done. The objective of the biopsy is not to remove all of the calcifications necessarily but rather get a sample of the tissue in the area of the calcifications to be certain the cluster of calcifications are not growing around an area of concern. The exception to this would be if the biopsy were excisional (lumpectomy) - then the calcifications would likely be part of the biopsy. If the calcifications in the opposite breast were scattered rather than clustered, then this may have been interpreted as "normal" and low risk for any problem.
