Tumor Grade.

Breast cancer grade is what will be part of the pathologist’s report of the breast cancer biopsy. Breast cancer grading is a powerful tool to help the doctor to conclude on the type of treatment  and the prognosis of the breast cancer. This is because the grade of the breast tumor tells as to how fast the cancer is going to progress. The Scarf-Bloom-Richardson system is used to grade the breast cancer.

Grading Breast Cancer.

Grading of breast cancer simply indicates the appearance of the cancer cells – the more normal their appearance, the lower the grade and the more abnormal they look, the higher the grade of the breast cancer

There are several systems to grade breast cancer tumor. The Bloom-Richardson system has a grading system of 1 to 3. While examining the microscopic slide prepared from the breast biopsy, the pathologist looks for three features:

• The extent of cancer (percentage) which is composed of tubular formation.
• Mitotic activity (rate of cell division) of the tumor cells.
• Cell size and uniformity ( nuclear grade).

Grades of Breast Cancer.

Each of these characteristics is then given a score from 1 to 3.

• Score 1 indicates a slow growing cancer.
• Score 2 indicates an intermediate cancer.
• Score 3 indicates a fast growing cancer.

The score of each of these features is added to get a total which should be between 3 to 9.

Breast Tumor Grade.

The breast tumor is graded as follows.

• Grade 1 breast cancer.

• Grade 2 breast cancer

• Grade 3 breast cancer.

The characteristics of each grade is shown in the table below.

Total score	Grade of Tumor.	Appearance of cells	Rate of growth.
3 to 5	Grade one	Normal appearance and well differentiated.	Slow growing and less likely to spread.
6 to 7	Grade two	Semi normal appearance and moderately differentiated.	Moderate growth rate.
8 to 9	Grade three	Poorly differentiated and  abnormal appearance.	Growing quickly and aggressively and more likely to spread.

Related posts:

1. Breast Cancer Symptoms with Breast Cancer Pictures.
2. Breast Cancer Statistics for U.S.A.
3. Triple Negative Breast Cancer.
4. Breast Cancer Statistics Worldwide.
5. Diagnosis and Testing for Breast Cancer.
6. Breast Cancer.
7. Breast Screening to Detect Breast Cancer.
8. What Causes Breast Cancer.