A rapid biopsy is an examination performed during a surgical operation to make a therapeutic decision and choose the type of surgical approach.
Reasons for conducting rapid biopsies and questions the pathologist must answer immediately:
- Tissue identification (e.g., parathyroid gland)
- Whether the tissue is cancerous or not
- If there is metastasis in a lymph node or distant site
- Whether the tumor removal margins are involved (positive or negative)
During this process, the surgeon selects a tissue specimen for examination, which is promptly sent to the pathology laboratory, frozen in a special device, cut on a slide, stained with hematoxylin/eosin, and microscopically examined.
The result of this examination is communicated orally to the surgeon 15-25 minutes after the sample is received by the laboratory.
The tissue from the rapid biopsy then undergoes all the stages of a histological examination at a later stage, where the final diagnosis is confirmed.