Who performs a bone marrow biopsy?

Who performs the bone marrow examination procedure? How long will the procedure last? Who performs the bone marrow is very specific to an institution. So in smaller institutions or many community-based private practices, it will be the physician who performs the bone marrow aspirin biopsy. At larger institutions and at myeloma centers, such as the one I work in, I'm lucky enough that we have a whole team of physician assistants. Some institutions use nurse practitioners, but we have a whole team of physician assistants that they do it all day long. The benefit is that they are better than any doctor ever could be because they do it so often. They are experts in that. So that's another way of minimizing the side effect and the discomfort during the procedure. So at our center at Huntsman Cancer Hospital, your bone marrow biopsy will be done by a nurse practitioner or physician assistant. Our doctors did these long ago in their fellowship and residency trainings, and they are still very qualified to do them. It's just usually your physician will not be doing this. Sometimes in a pinch or in a more complicated case, they may be involved, but 99% of the time it's going to be your nurse practitioner or PA. At some cancer centers, they do have teams of nurses who are trained and credentialed to do this. At Huntsman, that is not how we operate. That requires a different credentialing process. So it just depends on where you're at. If you're at a different center in another part of the country, a nurse may do this, and that is appropriate because they have the necessary training and qualification programs. But here you can expect a PA or a nurse practitioner to do it. I would say about 95% of our bone marrow biopsies that are done for outpatient patients are done in the clinic. If the patient strongly prefers or has had a bad experience in the past or we've discussed it previously, they may do this in interventional radiology either for conscious sedation or to have the CT scanner guidance if that's necessary for the patient. But that's the rare exception. Most of your biopsies you can expect to be done in the clinic work rooms. And then the procedure itself usually. So I think there's two times you want to know about. From check-in to when you're leaving to go back to your car, that's probably an hour, hour and a half. From the first poke of the needle to when I'm saying we're all done and I'm putting a dressing on, that's usually about 10 to 12 minutes. The caveat is sometimes the bone marrow is tricky. And especially if a patient is really sick or their counts aren't cooperating, it may take us just a little bit longer to get the samples we need for the pathologist. And so you can expect to be on the table a little longer in that case. But I would say that's the rare exception.