How to Do Testicular Cancer Self Exams - Biopsy procedures for testicular cancer

Hello, my name is Dr. Susan Jewell. And in this clip, we're going to talk about testicular biopsy. Now, what is a testicular biopsy? Now when the doctor suspects that maybe you have testicular cancer, they want to rule it in or out. The first thing they're going to do is, they're going to do is they're going to recommend a biopsy of the ***. So, what is it? Well, basically, what they do is they take a small portion of that tissue tumor from the *** and it's removed for examination by the pathologist. And he will look at it, the pathologist, and he will say "yes" or "no", rule in or rule out that this testicular cancer. So how to they actually perform the testicular biopsy? Well, there are two different methods and it depends on the doctor and depends on the stage or the type of tumor that you have; so the two different types of biopsy - the open biopsy and the needle biopsy. Now most often they do the open biopsy. So what do they do in the biopsy? Well, first of all, in the diagram, you can see that we have a diagram of the *** sitting in the scrotal sack. Now depending of course, on whether they suspect cancerous, they're going to do a small incision in the *** skin surface and then they're going to cut out a very small piece of tissue for the pathologist to examine. Now the open biopsy is done either in the doctor's office or in the surgery in a hospital but most of the time it's a very simple procedure and they would do it in the clinic or the office. They will use a local anesthetic to numb that area that they're going to do the incision. They'll cut that area with a very small incision and then they'll remove the tissue and then they'll stitch up that incision. And then it will just be left to heal, and it will heal, if you look after the wound properly, it will heal very quickly. And you'd only feel a little pain, like a pinprick or something, so it's not a long procedure and it's very fast recovery. The other one is needle biopsy. And this is not usually done. But when they do actually order the needle biopsy, they don't actually make a lesion or cut. They just use a special needle and they insert it into the, through the scrotal skin into the ***, the tumor area, and they just pull out a small amount of the tissue, of the cancerous tissue. So this is the way to do a testicular biopsy.