Evaluating Breast Lumps

Angie: Hi! I am Angie from Newark, New Jersey. I have a small lump in my breast and I just wanted to know how painful and extensive would be a breast biopsy.

Julia Lawrence: Angie, most of small lumps that women detect in their breast are benign, meaning not cancerous. Some of them in fact are cysts and we could evaluate that with an ultrasound. If the cyst then needs to be drained, they could put a needle in it, which is a skinny needle or at the same size needle someone used to withdraw blood. Those are not painful and we use local anesthetic for that.

If there is more suspicion that it's a cancer, again, a needle is put in the breast to remove a sample of the tissue but anesthetic is used to and usually there isn't a lot of pain and discomfort associated with it.


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