Ascites surgical procedures

There are several major advantages in fine needle aspiration. Aspiration biopsy is a nontraumatic procedure and can be repeated easily. This is important during the course of the disease, since this procedure could be used to plan hormonal therapy in metastatic disease (B14). Also, in metastatic disease one could apply the cytochemical technique to several metastatic lesions and thus obtain information on the receptor status of multiple lesions. This technique also has an advantage over surgical biopsies because some metastatic lesions, such as pleural effusions, ascites, or liver metastases, may not be amenable to surgical biopsy. This was demonstrated (L3) by hormonal receptor determination of pleural effusions using thoracoscopic examinations. 

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