beach sunrise wrote:When taking the biopsy did they take a CBC, Chem14 and CEA blood work?
TiredandTroubled wrote:Just wanted to share an update: I met with a colorectal surgeon today (board certified) and he conducted a sigmoidoscopy since my GI doctor didn’t label where the mass was.
They also took blood (I’ll finally know my CEA levels) and scheduled me for a CT scan that includes the chest area (previously my GI ordered only abdomen and pelvis).
I’m getting the CT scan this Friday and probably won’t know the results til the following Monday. The surgeon said the CT scan will indicate if it has spread (aka stage 4).
I still haven’t even gotten my biopsy results back yet but I felt so restless I needed to do something, so I set up this consultation with the surgeon and all the above happened.
Still feeling full of dread.
TiredandTroubled wrote:...
I still haven’t even gotten my biopsy results back yet but I felt so restless I needed to do something, so I set up this consultation with the surgeon and all the above happened...
Jacques wrote:TiredandTroubled wrote:...
I still haven’t even gotten my biopsy results back yet but I felt so restless I needed to do something, so I set up this consultation with the surgeon and all the above happened...
Just a few comments/questions about your biopsy. There is the possibility that your biopsy, like your original CT scan request, might be incomplete and it might need yet another sigmoidoscopy for the purpose of obtaining another biopsy sample.
Normally, a complete biopsy report for a mass suspected to be possibly malignant would have a number of required data items listed in several different categories.Some of the tests on the mass can be done locally at your hospital lab, but other more advanced tests might require biopsy samples to be sent out to specialty labs for analysis. For this reason, you might need to have yet another sigmoidoscopy to capture more biopsy tissue to send to other labs so that if the mass turns out to be malignant the oncologist can have all the items needed for a full biopsy report on the tumor.
If the mass is in fact cancer, then the doctors will need a full biopsy report before finalizing any kind of treatment plan because they need to know exactly what kind of cancer they are dealing with, and how aggressive it is.
Question: When you had the recent sigmoidoscopy, did the surgeon take another biopsy sample? Did he/she mention the possibility of requiring additional biopsy tests?
When you eventually receive the results from your biopsy as well as the results of your full CT scan, I think it would be a good idea to post a message here describing all categories of data items displayed in the reports. With this information, people here would be able to spot any missing items that might still require additional tests.
This is because it is a major error (in my opinion) for patients to hastily decide on a course of treatment before all of the relevant diagnosis/staging data items have been evaluated.
It should be noted that the items needed in a colorectal cancer biopsy report are not arbitrary but are specified explicitly in the guidelines of the College of American Pathologists (CAP). This includes ordinary biomarkers as well as genomic biomarkers. Whether an item is declared as required or optional can depend on the stage of the cancer.
https://www.cap.org/protocols-and-guidelines
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