Surgical biopsy

Your health care provider may recommend a surgical biopsy if the cells in question can't be accessed with other biopsy procedures or if other biopsy results have been inconclusive.

During a surgical biopsy, a surgeon makes an incision in your skin to access the suspicious area of cells. Examples of surgical biopsy procedures include surgery to remove a breast lump for a possible breast cancer diagnosis and surgery to remove a lymph node for a possible lymphoma diagnosis.

Surgical biopsy procedures can be used to remove part of a suspicious area of cells. Or surgical biopsy may remove all of the cells.

You may receive local anesthetics to numb the area of the biopsy. Some surgical biopsy procedures require general anesthetics to put you in a sleep-like state. You might need to stay in the hospital after the procedure.