The role of puncture biopsy in the diagnosis of bone and soft tissue tumors

Bone tumors and soft tissue tumors are diseases that seriously endanger human health and life. Early detection, correct diagnosis and timely treatment have an important impact on the prognosis. With the continuous updating of examination means and methods, the correct rate of diagnosis has been gradually improved, but there are still a large proportion of tumors that do not have typical imaging characteristics and are difficult to diagnose. The correct diagnosis of bone and soft tissue tumors requires a combination of clinical manifestations, imaging manifestations and pathology. Among them, pathological diagnosis plays a key role in the selection of treatment plan. The method to obtain preoperative pathological diagnosis is biopsy, that is, a small amount of lesion tissue is obtained and sent to pathology department to obtain pathological diagnosis by microscopic observation or immunohistochemistry method. Biopsy is divided into closed biopsy, excisional biopsy and resection biopsy, among which closed biopsy is divided into needle aspiration puncture biopsy and trocar needle puncture biopsy. Puncture biopsy is currently the main way for bone tumor specialists to obtain preoperative pathological diagnosis. Incisional biopsy must be performed through a surgical incision. Unless the tumor site is superficial, it is difficult to clearly reveal the tumor with a small incision. For deeply located tumors, incisional biopsy is a complex procedure, and most importantly, incisional biopsy inevitably severely disrupts the anatomical compartment where the tumor is located, and contamination of tumor cells within the incision is almost inevitable, which can have serious adverse effects on limb preservation treatment and patient prognosis. Incisional biopsy was once considered the most accurate and reliable method for preoperative biopsy, but in today’s rapidly developing limb preservation technology, it should be used with caution and is not suitable as the preferred biopsy method in order to obtain the best prognosis for patients. Excisional biopsy, another form of excisional biopsy, is suitable for benign tumors with clear boundaries, no obvious invasive changes, and small tumors that can be completely and thoroughly excised in non-important areas, and is a good method of treatment and biopsy for suitable disease materials. Excisional biopsy should be strictly limited to those cases that can be identified as benign tumors, and it is not suitable for tumors with malignant potential under any circumstances, otherwise it may cause residual and spread of tumors. Compared with excisional biopsy, percutaneous aspiration biopsy is valued for its simplicity, safety, low impact on subsequent tumor treatment, and low chance of causing wound infection. Needle aspiration biopsy uses a thin needle and is mostly used for soft tissue tumor biopsy, which is simple and can be performed on an outpatient basis. For osteoid-rich, hard masses or tumors confined within the cortex, the strength of the thin needle is limited and it is difficult to enter the lesion, so fine needle aspiration biopsy is difficult to achieve the biopsy purpose for bone tumors. Percutaneous trocar needle biopsy generally adopts a trocar with a serrated edge of 2-3 mm inner diameter and a trocar needle with a conical tip. The conical needle center can break through the soft tissue and bone, and after entering the lesion, the trocar is rotated and the serrated cutting edge is rotated and advanced to obtain columnar tissue with the same inner diameter as the trocar, which can obtain tissue blocks with high diagnostic value and avoid the possible adverse effects of incisional biopsy. It is a method worth advocating for bone tumor biopsy.