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Do pathologists do FNAs or bone marrow biopsies?

Started by beary
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LADoc00 said:
Common, next question.

How often does a bone histo look malignant, when in fact, it is not? For example, biopsies done of lesions that shouldn't have been biopsied (like desmoid that is mistaken for a ?paraosteal osteosarcoma). Not sure if I'm being clear.
 
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bente said:
How often does a bone histo look malignant, when in fact, it is not? For example, biopsies done of lesions that shouldn't have been biopsied (like desmoid that is mistaken for a ?paraosteal osteosarcoma). Not sure if I'm being clear.

This is why you insist on at least a radiology report and an appropriate clinical history.
 
bente said:
How often does a bone histo look malignant, when in fact, it is not? For example, biopsies done of lesions that shouldn't have been biopsied (like desmoid that is mistaken for a ?paraosteal osteosarcoma). Not sure if I'm being clear.

Often, especially when its unclear whether the patient has a healing fracture callous or a true pathologic fracture.
 
I think it's often institution dependent. It's either IM or peds hematologist/oncologists or hematopathologists doing bone marrow biopsies. At my hospital I haven't seen pathologists do bone marrow biopsies. For FNAs it's either surgeons, radiologists (for stereotactic CT guided FNAs), or cytopathologists who do FNAs. But while I was on the interview trail at some institutions the cytopathologists don't do ANY FNAs 😕 because of billing purposes i.e. clinicians get billed more FNAs than a pathologist would.