Core biopsies are good enough for lymphomas
Reviewed by Stuart Clark

This paper, from the South of England, has reviewed ultrasound-guided core needle biopsies over a six-year period investigating the use of the detection of head and neck lymphomas. There were 367 samples included from 226 patients; 215 of the 226 patients (95.1%) had samples that were sufficiently diagnostic to allow the initiation of oncology treatment. The 11 patients whose samples proved not to be diagnostic went onto surgical excision biopsy. The paper briefly touched upon fine needle aspiration cytology and how this did not perform well in such a patient cohort of lymphomas. They obviously advocate the use of core biopsies and suspected lymphomas with a high success rate. – SC

The diagnostic performance of ultrasound-guided core biopsy in the diagnosis of head and neck lymphoma: results in 226 patients.
Cuenca-Jimenez T, Chia Z, Desai A, et al.
INT J ORAL MAXILLOFAC SURG
2021;50(4):431-6.