Biopsies can incur unnecessary physical costs, too, for previously treated women. Operating on a breast that has already undergone surgery or radiation could result in unavoidable disfigurement. The stereotactic procedure offers patients improved comfort over excisional biopsy. The procedure is not painful or time-consuming. The needle is quickly inserted and withdrawn.
Recovery is rapid.
By using a local anesthetic, most patients can resume normal activities within hours. Biopsy results are typically available in 24 hours. Fox Chase researchers are using this opportunity to study tissue samples removed by stereotactic biopsy to learn more about the biology of early, non-cancerous breast tumors and possibly keep breast cancer from developing in some patients. At doses several times higher than the conventional maximum tolerated does, many chemotherapeutic agents can show impressive results and have few side effects, except for the dangerous depletion of white and red blood cells and platelets. To permit high-dose curative therapy without impaired immunity and anemia, autologous transplants of stem cells, parent cells from which all blood cells arise, are of growing value.