Can Cancer Spread From a Biopsy? Here's What Research Says

What if the test that's supposed to help you is the very thing you're afraid of? What if the needle biopsy isn't just getting information, but waking something up? This is one of the most common fears I hear from patients. If you poke the tumor, won't it spread? Should I even do the biopsy? And today we're going to answer this honestly. No hype, no fear, no fake reassurances, just the real data so that you can make smart decisions. And here's the truth. Yes, biopsy related seating is real. But here's what nobody explains. It's rare and it depends on the cancer type and the techniques used. If you used right techniques, it's not going to happen. And here's the big truth. Avoiding the right biopsy can be far more dangerous than doing it correctly. I'm Dr. Dino Prado, founder of Envita Medical Centers. For the last 25 years, my team and I have helped thousands of patients who've failed some of the top hospitals across the country using precision targeting. And I get this question a lot. Should I get a biopsy? I'm concerned it's going to spread and I'm going to break that down for you today. The needle biopsy, which is what everybody's concerned, is going to spread the cancer. There's also something called a liquid biopsy, which is coming from just doing a basic blood draw and looking for circulating tumor cells that have spread from the tumor, which can give us great information. And we're going to look at the real risk of spread and the smartest way to reduce the risk while increasing your ability to do precision targeted oncology. So let's get started with precision oncology. We want precise testing that often includes tissue biopsies and liquid biopsies. And then we use targets, conventional, integrative, on off label, thousand plus data markers so we can treat patients with precision. Basically give your body what it needs. There's a right way to do it and a wrong way. Today I'll show you the way so you can ask your doctors and make sure you're getting it done right so that you can stop living in fear, reduce your risk and increase your odds of getting well and staying well because you've got an accurate diagnosis. Now, I'm going to go into this here in a minute, but the diagnosis we get with a biopsy tells us maybe type and stage of cancer, but we need to go way beyond that. And in precision oncology, we run thousands of data points because it's not just the fear of the biopsy, but it's the information people are not getting that I believe is the worst situation. Because once you have the right information, you have so many more options to getting well and staying well. So here's a big question. Does a biopsy spread cancer? And the answer is very rarely and mostly when it's done poorly. Now let's remove the fear with facts. Here's some of the data. Liver tumor biopsies are reported seeding or spreading around 0.6% up to 2.3% and that's when it's done wrong. And kidneys.01% and it's very rare. And again when it's done wrong. And prostate, extremely rare. Lung, it depends on the route and the situation. But again, it's rare. And in breast cancer, less than 0.01%. So yes, seeding can happen happen. But it does not need to happen when the technique is modern and controlled and done correctly. And here's the key point. The information gained from a biopsy is life changing. It can change outcomes. It can give you the exact right targets when the information's used correctly. And it gives you so much more information to just a scan or a tumor marker. The information gained from a biopsy can change outcomes in ways that scans can never do because you're getting real tumor data in many reviews. The risks, like I mentioned for clinical meaningful spread of a biopsy is way under 1% or 0.01% really. And when done correctly, it's really almost zero. So now let's clear up something important. Seeding is not the same thing as a full cancer spread. Seeding means a few cells get dislodged along the needle path and escape. Most of the time those cells, they don't grow, they don't really go anywhere. And especially if it's in the path and there's followed up by surgery or other treatments, it doesn't really go anywhere. But there's also a time factor. So if surgery or a local procedure happens soon after the biopsy, the CH surviving of that seed is less. So let's just talk about the smarter way to think about this. We don't just do a biopsy, we use an intelligent workflow. And that's what I want you to gain in this episode, the workflow. Before we ever talk about needles and biopsies, are there circulating tumor cells present? That means if we do a basic blood draw and we look for CTCs, if they're circulating tumor cell present, that means the tumor cells are already escaped and they're in the bloodstream. And in plain English, the cancer is already showing signs of spread. And so we're less worried about biopsies causing spread because the spread is already happening. Have an earlier stage cancer or contained, and the circulating tumor cells are not detected. This suggests the tumor may still be localized. And this changes our strategy. And this is where we get smart. So let's look at scenario one. You have circulating tumor cells present with just like a basic blood draw. So we assume there's a micro spread already. Now, we need deeper testing and targeting. So, yes, we do a biopsy. We need the data. And done correctly, with the right modern technique, the chance of this spreading is virtually nil. The biopsy didn't create the spread. The spread was already there. The blood test already showed us that there's a spread in stress or trying to move. So we need systemic care, and the biopsy becomes a tool for information. So we can now treat the cancer systemically in the body. In the second scenario, let's say there are no circulating tumor cells and the tumors contain, and we know from imaging and everything else, we think it's localized. Now we use a capture control strategy. That means we do the biopsy in a safe method. So we're not going to get any spread. But at the same time, we ablate the tumor or cryo ablate it, freeze it, and kill it while we're there because it's so small. And now we've done two things. Not only gotten the information we wanted, we've already destroyed the cancer. And that's really power positive. You're getting the data and you're locking down the local environment and shutting the tumor down. So let's talk technique. This is the part I want you to get because this is where people win or lose. One of the best and safest methods is called the coaxial needle technique. That's what our interventional radiologists use, and that's all they use. This is where you use one needle to go to the tumor, and then you go in with a second needle that goes through that one called the biopsy gun. And with that, you capture as many cells as you need and pull them out. And because you have like a sheath, one needle within a needle, you don't get any spread because it's not going anywhere. It's being pulled right. This is how you avoid a biopsy, causing a spread. And that's a smarter way to do that. Now, sometimes you'll get people doing biopsies, in my opinion, physicians that shouldn't be doing it. There should be interventional radiology, oncology or interventional radiologists that do it because this is what they do all day. They use micro needles with image guided and they have the right tools and they know the coaxial techniques and that's who you have to your biopsy. It's when you find doctors kind of just pulling cells out and just trying to do a cell capture on their own. That's when it gets a little messy. That's where you get a risk, even though low of seeding. Use these techniques. It just helps protect the tissue, protect the cells. It actually gives us a better biopsy. We can get more data. And from there it reduces dragging of the cells along the needle path. And these techniques in large studies have shown zero seeding or metastases. And there's a great study like a thousand plus liver cancer patients where this was done and there was no spread. So that's the key. I want you to get home. There's a right way to do this. Now let's talk about the real problem with the biopsy. Now that we've got the fear out of the way regarding collecting the cells, which is what everybody's scared of, don't be worried about that. If it's done right, you're going okay. But let's talk about the bigger problem, which is what's the information you're getting from your biopsy? To me, this is where the real crime happens. You're getting a biopsy and all you're getting is a few markers. It's telling you the stage and type of cancer that is not enough. And if you're lucky, you push for a few biomarkers and that's not going to do it. I've seen this where you have these quote unquote cancer consultants, some sort of PhD or people working in the area of cancer, and they tell you go get a biomarker testing and then you find some smart drug to add to your regimen. And all it does is slow the cancer down. I've been doing this for two and a half decades and we have treated many, many thousand patients. The answer isn't only in the biomarkers. You want to grab those biomarkers. Yes, DNA is important, shows us the mutation pathways, but we also want the RNA transcriptomics and we want immune profiling with spatial biology, which now shows us well over a thousand markers. So we can now get all the data and information and use those algorithms to give the right treatment to the patient. That's the key of the biopsy, whether we're using a circulating tumor cell or we call a liquid biopsy drawn from your blood to look for the circulating tumor cells, and we examine those with high detail in the same way, or we use a T information through a needle biopsy. The key is the data, because the real goal is to knock the cancer out and get the immune system to do the job. And the way we do that is by knowing if the tumor's cold, what's blocking it, what's suppressing it, what are the mutations, how do we address it? And you only do that with deep data. And if you don't have the data, you're guessing. And then that brings us back to the national comprehensive cancer Network guidelines, which is the one size fits all oncology. So you do this biopsy and standard of care, and then it's a regimen that you're put on. No matter what major hospital you go to, you're put on a protocol of chemo, and then you do that, and you hope it works. But when you have data in precision oncology, you take a lot of the guest game out, because instead of using dogma, you're using data. And the data tells you specifically these are the right markers for your biology. And that's the power of getting a biopsy and doing it the right way. So here's the rule. Biopsies don't cause cancer to spread. Bad techniques do. And bad planning spreads risk. Blind protocols spread risk. That's what you need to be worried about. So here are the questions you should ask before getting a biopsy. Are you using the coaxial needle technique? If you're doing the coaxial needle technique, you just go in once, and then with the biopsy gun going in the middle, you can get all of the samples you want through that same needle. And that's the correct technique. Have you checked my circulating tumor cells? Do you know if this has a chance of spreading or not? Is this small and localized? And if so, can we ablate it and freeze it and get rid of it at the same time? Those are the questions you want to ask your doctor. That's what you really want to look at when you're looking at a biopsy. Let me leave you with this. It's usually better to get the biopsy than to avoid it, because the right data leads to the right plan. The risk is very. And when done correctly, virtually nil. A good biopsy and good testing should reveal all the key data points. One, done correctly, like we do in precision oncology, we're not just looking at a few markers. It unveils the right treatment plan for the patient and our clinical experience. That's what we recommend for patients to do. Most people don't always get the full picture. They get stuck being scared of the biopsy. But you need to think of it as it's giving you the information to shut this cancer down. So here's the real problem. It's not the biopsy spreading, but it's the patient's not getting the right data. I have seen this in my many years of clinic clinical experience. 90% of the patients that we see are on the wrong treatments when they arrive because they didn't have the right data. Testing and targeting to the care. But with a full precision targeting, now they can get the right biomarkers. With RNA transcriptomics, over a thousand data points. With immune profiling and spatial biology, now we can see the immune system turning cold tumors hot. And this is the big difference. Remember, no two cancers are the same. Two people with the same type and stage of cancer are going to have totally different markers and treatment. That's why this approach is so important. And it starts with great testing. I hope this was helpful and helped inform you. Now, I know that 90% of you who watch this haven't subscribed yet. Please subscribe because it helps us to get the Google algorithm going so that more people can get educated on precision oncology. Again, I hope this episode was helpful and may the Lord bless you on your journey to healing. Sam.