Prostate biopsy handling: special tiss1ue embedding technique with sponges affects the yield of prostatic tissue available for microscopic examination.

Prostate cancer is considered as the second most frequently diagnosed malignancy and the sixth leading cause of cancer death in males. The quality of the prostate biopsy and its processing techniques may influence the outcome of the histopathological assessment which is the gold standard for cancer diagnosis. An audit of 240 prostate biopsies from 20 patients was conducted to compare the quality and length of tissue before and after the implementation of sponge embedding technique. The average length of prostatic biopsy before the procedure was 5.8 mm (range 1-15 mm) and the average length after implementation of the procedure was 9.5 mm (range 2-17 mm). This equates to a total of 60% increase in tissue volume after implementation of sponge embedding. A simple modification in the embedding of prostate biopsy in the laboratory resulted in higher quality biopsies available for histopathological examination.