Question: How long does it normally take to diagnose someone or to find a cancr cell?

Sam Chilka answered on 4 Jul 2012:

In my job I look at samples of cells and tissues from patients. Once the sample has been taken from the patient, it is sent to the histopathology lab for processing. Large pieces of tissue need to be “dissected” – that is cut into smaller pieces, and some of these smaller peices are selected for processing. Small pieces of tissue can be processed straight away. Processing the tissue in the lab makes it able to be cut into very thin slices that are put onto glass microscope slides. It takes a minimum of 24hours to to produce these slides. Once I have the slides, it often doesn’t take very long to find the abnormal or cancerous cells -although sometimes this can be more difficult and I will need to do more tests on the tissue. On average the whole process, from taking the sample from the patient, to me looking at the slides and finding the diagnosis, takes around 3-5 days.