What is a "core needle biopsy"?

What is a "core needle biopsy"?

A core needle biopsy is a larger specimen of tissue than a fine needle aspiration, an FNA, and a surgeon uses this to go into an area of concern to get a piece of tissue to analyze under a microscope to determine whether it's benign, not cancer, or malignant, cancerous. A core needle biopsy gets enough tissue that you are able to determine whether it is a pre-invasive cancer or whether it's an invasive cancer because treatment options may be different depending on whether the core needle biopsy reveals an invasive cancer or pre-invasive cancer.