What types of biopsies are used to diagnose skin cancer?
When a patient presents in the office with a lesion, which may or may not be a skin cancer, we need tissue in order to identify under the microscope both whether it's a skin cancer or what type of skin cancer it is. There are numerous ways that we can do that, but all of them require some sort of tissue sampling, also known as a biopsy. There are several different types of biopsies that can be taken.First, there's something known as a shave biopsy, which is taking the top and some of the bottom part of the lesion off. Second, there is a punch biopsy, which is something that is done by taking a small core of the lesion, which is narrow but deep.There is an incisional biopsy, which is taking part of the lesion out in total.And there is an excisional biopsy, which is removing the entire lesion and submitting that for pathological confirmation.The type of biopsy used is dictated usually by the type of lesion we suspect, and by some cosmetic considerations as well. We need to be doing multiple biopsies in order to determine whether or not patients have skin cancer and so we need to do them in such a way that it's not such a cosmetic or financial burden that patients will be hesitant to do them. So we need to make them as easy for the patient as possible, at the same time get the information that we need.
