Can malignant tumours be staged from a biopsy?

[kwaker5]

Or do you have to wait until after surgery? It is bowel cancer (if that makes a difference).

For bowel cancer, the full staging needs to wait till surgery has been done

Thanks. Do you know what information can be gleaned from a biopsy (apart from the fact the growth is malignant)?

Theres not much that mkes any difference to treatment plans in bowel cancer - in other cancer this is different though

They do genetics tests, looking for K-ras mutation and possibly others, they can give an idea of treatment options and, depending what exact tests they do, they can look for the possibility of HNPCC.

I've just finished chemotherapy for stage 3 bowel cancer.

There's a bit of information from the American Cancer Society here although I have no idea how accurate it is, or whether it's the same in UK, and the Macmillan website is usually helpful. I'd advise against googling too much as people mainly go online with horror stories!

info from biopsy, CT scan and full picture (poss surgery) before staging afaik. Cancer Research ik site is absolutely fab re staging, macmillan good on treatment. imho obv. Hoping for the best outcome in the circs. Lots of experience on here, some wonderful mners

Thanks for the help. I have looked at the Macmillan site/Cancer research, etc., which is where I learned about the staging but I wasn't clear at what point this could be done. It is my dad who has just been diagnosed. He should be having an op in about 3 weeks, so I am keeping my fingers crossed.

Hi as others have said you can't properly stage until after surgery as you need to know whether any of the local lymph nodes were involved. The only exception to this is if his pre operative CT scan shows any spread outside of the bowel to other organs - it would automatically then be stage IV . The fact that he is going straight to surgery sounds promising.

I know it must be a very worrying time but try to stay positive - many people with bowel cancer are cured.