Patients will receive an invitation to enroll in the SMIL Patient Portal within 48 hours after visiting one of our locations for an appointment. If you did not receive an invitation after 48 hours, or have questions about the Patient Portal, please contact SMIL Medical Records at patientportal@esmil.com.
Benefits and Risks- Ultrasound Guided Breast Biopsy
Benefits
The procedure is less invasive than surgical biopsy, leaves little or no scarring and can be performed in less than an hour.
Ultrasound imaging uses no ionizing radiation.
Ultrasound-guided breast biopsy reliably provides tissue samples that can show whether a breast lump is benign or malignant.
An ultrasound guided breast biopsy exam is fast and avoids the need for ionizing radiation exposure.
With ultrasound it is possible to follow the motion of the biopsy needle as it moves through the breast tissue.
Ultrasound guided breast biopsy is able to evaluate lumps under the arm or near the chest wall, which are hard to reach with stereotactic biopsy.
Ultrasound guided biopsy is less expensive than other biopsy methods, such as open surgical biopsy or stereotactic biopsy.
Recovery time is brief and patients can soon resume their usual activities.
Risks
There is a risk of bleeding and forming a hematoma, or a collection of blood at the biopsy site. The risk, however, appears to be less than one percent of patients.
An occasional patient has significant discomfort, which can be readily controlled by non-prescription pain medication.
Any procedure where the skin is penetrated carries a risk of infection.
A biopsy of tissue located deep within the breast carries a slight risk that the needle will pass through the chest wall, allowing air around the lung that could collapse a lung. This is a rare occurrence.
