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Sign Up. What are your concerns? Verywell Health uses only high-quality sources, including peer-reviewed studies, to support the facts within our articles. Read our editorial process to learn more about how we fact-check and keep our content accurate, reliable, and trustworthy. National Library of Medicine. Skin Lesion Biopsy. Farber, A. Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology. Harrison's Principles of Internal Medicine. Madu, F. European Journal of Surgical Oncology.
Epub ahead of print. Related Articles. Diagnosing Skin Cancer. How Nodular Melanoma Is Diagnosed. Squamous Cell Carcinoma Stages. How Bowen's disease is diagnosed. Causes and Risk Factors of Nodular Melanoma. What Is Merkel Cell Carcinoma? However, if cancer cells were found in the margins of the removed tissue, additional treatment will usually be recommended.
The next section in this guide is Stages. It explains the system doctors use to describe the extent of the skin cancer. Use the menu to choose a different section to read in this guide. Your doctor may consider these factors when choosing a diagnostic test: The type of cancer suspected Your signs and symptoms Your age and general health The results of earlier medical tests Biopsy Because non-melanoma skin cancer rarely spreads, a biopsy is often the only test needed to diagnose and find out the stage, or extent, of cancer.
Learn more about how a biopsy is used to make a diagnosis. Types of Cancer. Skin Cancer Non-Melanoma Guide. Medical Illustrations. Risk Factors and Prevention. Symptoms and Signs. Types of Treatment. For these types of biopsies, a surgical knife is used to cut through the full thickness of skin. A wedge or sliver of skin is removed for examination, and the edges of the wound are usually stitched together. All skin biopsy samples are sent to a lab, where they are looked at with a microscope by a doctor called a pathologist.
Often, the samples are sent to a dermatopathologist , a doctor who has special training in looking at skin samples. It isn't common for a basal or squamous cell cancer to spread beyond the skin, but if it does it usually goes first to nearby lymph nodes, which are bean-sized collections of immune cells.
If your doctor feels lymph nodes under the skin near the tumor that are too large or too firm, a lymph node biopsy may be done to find out if cancer has spread to them. For an FNA biopsy, the doctor uses a syringe with a thin, hollow needle to remove very small fragments of the lymph node.
The needle is smaller than the needle used for a blood test. A local anesthetic is sometimes used to numb the area first. This test rarely causes much discomfort and does not leave a scar. FNA biopsies are not as invasive as some other types of biopsies, but they may not always provide a large enough sample to find cancer cells. If an FNA doesn't find cancer in a lymph node but the doctor still suspects the cancer has spread there, the lymph node may be removed by surgery and examined.
This will leave a small scar. But if your doctor thinks you might be at risk for the cancer spreading outside the skin, imaging tests such as MRI or CT scans of the area might be done.
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