Stereotactic Biopsy of the Brain – What, Why, How? 

As the brain is a very sensitive organ, where damage to even a single nerve can lead to severe body damage, the type of biopsy performed for the brain is a stereotactic biopsy.

Dr. Sachin Patel, Neurosurgeon at Krishna Shalby Hospitals talks in detail about this. A stereotactic biopsy is a minimally invasive surgical procedure where a thin needle is inserted into the brain by a neurosurgeon to extract a small piece of tissue to examine under a microscope. The goal of a biopsy is to diagnose an abnormality seen on an MRI or CT scan.

While MRI and CT scans are very good at showing parts of the brain that are abnormal, they can’t yet tell us with 100% certainty what an abnormality represents – a cancerous tumor, a benign tumor, an infection, an inflammatory process, a vascular abnormality, or other pathology.

Because the treatments for these abnormalities are so different, it is important to determine what a lesion is so that appropriate treatment can be recommended.