Breast Cancer Stage.
When your doctor mentions stage of breast cancer, it indicates basically the state or the condition or the severity of the breast cancer. It also indicates to what extent the cancer has progressed or how much the breast cancer has spread. There are different stages of breast cancer and each breast cancer stage has a story to tell about the condition of the cancer.
Importance of Breast Cancer Staging.
Staging of breast cancer is very important for your oncologist or cancer specialist because
- It helps to determine the type of treatment to be given for that particular cancer patient.
- It helps to evaluate the prognosis due to the treatment.
- And staging of the breast cancer helps to bring about a global benefit in collecting information on breast cancer and breastcancer statistics for better research.
Correct breast cancer staging is therefore important because incorrect staging of the cancer will lead to incorrect treatment.
Types of Breast Cancer Staging.
As mentioned above there are different ways to stage the different types of cancers. The most commonly used are:
1) TNM Breast Cancer Staging.
T stands for Tumor,
N stands for the Node of the lymphatic system and
M stands for metastasis. (spread of cancer).
TNM staging of breast cancer is usually used to stage solid malignant tumors. Most of the tumors are classified by this system but some like brain tumors are not. TNM staging of cancer was developed by a non governmental body called UICC or International Union Against Cancer with the purpose to bring about a global consensus to stage cancers and access its spread. This purpose has been achieved and TNM is globally used. This also helped to bring about a coordinated global effort in cancer research. The UICC cancer staging has the same definitions of the AJCC cancer staging (American Joint Committee on Cancer).
Parameters of TNM staging.
Numbers are suffixed after T, N and M to indicate the progress of cancer. A ‘X’ suffixed after T or N or M simply means the cancer has yet to be assessed or evaluated and therefore no staging has been done yet.
> The T staging informs of the size of the tumor.
1 to 4 are suffixed after ‘T’ to indicate the size of the tumor. A T1 will mean a smaller sized tumor while a T4 will indicate a larger sized tumor.
> The N describes the lymph node involvement if any.
0 to 3 are suffixed after ‘N’ to indicate extent of spread of malignancy to the lymph nodes. N-0 will indicate that there has been no spread or metastasis of malignancy to the lymph node. N1 will mean spread to the local regional lymph node. N3 will mean more involvement to the distal and more numerous lymph nodes. N2 gives the metastasis involvement between N1 and N3.
> The M describes the spread of the breast cancer to distal organs.
0 and 1 are used after M to indicate metastasis to other distant organs. M-0 means no metastasis and M1 will indicate that the malignancy has spread from the primary site to distant organs. This is the final stage of breast cancer.
Next page –>
Your action step.
If you feel this article could be useful, do share it on social media and pass a comment below.
Medic On WebRelated posts: