Per-operative biopsies: experience in the general surgery service

Intraoperative freezing biopsy (frozen section, per-operative), is an indispensable method, of great help for the work of surgeons and perhaps the most important form of interconsultation with an anatomical pathology service, especially with patients with tumors, since it allows directing the treatment, facilitates the decision whether or not to continue a surgical procedure and avoids unnecessary mutilations, even with the patient in the operating room. Its main indications are to establish the presence and nature of a lesion by determining whether it is benign or malignant, to check whether the surgical margins are free or not of disease, to establish whether the tissue obtained is representative and viable in case the exact diagnosis cannot be made in the intraoperative biopsy, and thus to obtain additional samples of the same for a definitive diagnosis in kerosene sections. With the present study, an analysis is made of the experience of per-operative biopsies, performed in the General Surgery Service of the "Dr. Francisco Antonio Rísquez" Hospital, between January 1986 and December 2016, despite not having this intra-institutional possibility.