What are The Different Stages of Breast Cancer?
Breast cancer is more common in women, but it can affect men as well.
The stage of breast cancer is determined by the characteristics of the cancer, such as having hormone receptors and how large.
Breast cancer stage is one of the determining factors in evaluating treatment options.
Cancer doctors use a variety of diagnostic tests to evaluate breast cancer and develop appropriate treatment plans for sufferers.
Experts have many ways to determine breast cancer stage. Clues are obtained from a physical exam, biopsy, x-ray, bone scan, and blood tests.
A doctor called a pathologist places tissue samples from the breast and lymph nodes under a microscope to find out more.
Based on these findings, doctors string letters and numbers together to determine the stage of each breast cancer case. This may seem like strange code to you, but it's actually a way of pinpointing what's going on with cancer survivors.
The longer the list of letters and numbers, the more accurate the diagnosis and the more appropriate the treatment plan.
Breast Cancer Definition
Breast cancer is defined as a malignant tumor arising from breast cells. Although breast cancer mostly occurs in women, it can affect men as well. Breast cancer and its complications can affect virtually any part of the body.
How To Determine Breast Cancer Stages
Your pathology report will include the information used to stage breast cancer, i.e. whether the cancer is confined to one area of the breast, or has spread to healthy tissue within the breast, or to other parts of the body.
Doctors will determine this during surgery to remove the cancer and look at one or more axillary lymph nodes, where breast cancer is most likely to spread. Doctors may also perform additional blood tests if there is reason to believe that the cancer may have spread beyond the breast.
Cancer Can Spread
The most common places where breast cancer spreads are lymph nodes, bones, liver, lungs and brain. Symptoms you may experience will depend on where the cancer has spread. It's possible that you don't have all the symptoms listed here. If you have symptoms of breast cancer that worry you, discuss them with your GP or cancer specialist.
How fast does breast cancer spread?
It is difficult to accurately measure how fast breast cancer can grow, including the timeframe, because this disease has a different impact on each person. Cancer is caused by a mutation in human cells. Mutations do not follow a normal and predictable pattern of cell division, so it is difficult to predict their development. Tumors arise when damaged cells replicate repeatedly forming clumps of abnormal cells.
Breast cancer cells can break apart and travel through the lymph or blood vessels to other areas of the body. If breast cancer cells start growing in another part of the body, this is called metastasis.
Breast cancer may metastasize to lymph nodes, bones and lungs. Regardless of the new tumor's location, doctors still treat it as breast cancer.
The Stages of Breast Cancer
The breast cancer staging system, known as the TNM system (cancer.net), is overseen by the AJCC, the American Joint Committee on Cancer. The AJCC is a community of cancer specialists who look at how cancer is classified and communicated. This is to ensure that all breast cancer treatment facilities and doctors describe the cancer uniformly so that the results of women's treatment can be compared and understood.
The stage is calculated based on 3 clinical characteristics, T, N, and M:
Size of the cancer, and whether or not it has spread to nearby tissue (T)
Is cancer in lymph nodes (N)
Whether the cancer has spread to other body parts outside of the breast (M)
Stage 0 Breast Cancer
Breast cancer stage 0 is difficult to detect. There may be no lump felt during the self-examination, and there may not be any other symptoms. However, breast self-examination and regular screening are always important and can often lead to early diagnosis, when cancer is most easily treated.
Stage 0 cancer is most often found incidentally during a breast biopsy for other reasons, such as to investigate an unrelated breast lump.
Stage 1 Breast Cancer
The tumor is up to 2 cm long and there are no involved lymph nodes. The cancer cells had spread beyond the scene, and into the surrounding breast tissue.
Because stage 1 tumors are small, they may be hard to detect. However, breast self-examination and regular screenings are very important and can often lead to an early diagnosis, when cancer is easiest to treat.
Stage 1 breast cancer is divided into 2 categories:
Stage 1A: The tumor is 2 cm or smaller and has not spread beyond the breast.
Stage 1B: Small clusters of cancer cells measuring no more than 2 mm, found in the lymph nodes, and no tumor in the breast, or small tumors, measuring 2 cm or less.
Stage 2 breast cancer
Also known as invasive breast cancer, the tumor at this stage measures between 2 cm and 5 cm, or the cancer has spread to the lymph nodes under the arm on the same side with breast cancer.
Stage 2 breast cancer is a more advanced form of the disease. At this stage, the cancer cells have spread beyond their original location, and into the surrounding breast tissue, and the tumor is larger than stage 1 disease. However, stage 2 also means that the cancer has not spread to other parts of the body.
Stage 2 breast cancer is divided into two:
Stage 2A: There is no tumor in the breast, but the cancer has spread to the armpits, axillary lymph nodes, or
a tumor in the breast that is 2 cm or smaller and the cancer has spread to the axillary lymph nodes, or
a tumor in the breast measuring 2 cm to 5 cm but not yet reached the axillary lymph nodes.
Stage 2B: The tumor is 2 cm to 5 cm in length and the cancer has spread to the axillary lymph nodes, or the tumor is larger than 5 cm but has not spread to the axillary lymph nodes.
Breast cancer 3rd stage
The tumor at this stage is more than 2 inches in diameter, and the cancer has spread to the axillary lymph nodes or has spread to other lymph nodes or tissues near the breast.
Stage 3 breast cancer is a more invasive form of cancer. At this stage, cancer cells usually have not spread to more distant parts of the body, but are present in some axillary lymph nodes. The tumor may also be quite large at this stage, extending to the chest wall or breast skin.
Breast cancer stage 3 falls into 3 categories::
Stage 3A: No tumor is found in the breast, but the cancer is in the axillary lymph nodes that are attached to other structures, or the cancer can be found in the lymph nodes near the breast bone. The tumor is two cm to four cm. The cancer has spread to axillary lymph nodes that are attached to each other or to other structures, or the cancer may have spread to lymph nodes near the breastbone.
Stage 3B: The tumor can be any size, and the cancer has spread to the chest wall or the skin of the breast.
Stage 3C: There may be no signs of breast cancer or a tumor of any size and may have spread to the chest wall and/or breast skin. The cancer cells are present in lymph nodes above or below the collarbone. The cancer cells may have spread to the axillary lymph nodes or to lymph nodes near the breastbone. Inflammatory breast cancer is cancer that spreads to the breast skin.
Breast cancer 4th stage
Tumors can be any size, lymph nodes may contain cancer cells and have spread to other body parts such as bones, lungs, liver or brain.
If a person has stage 4 breast cancer, it means the cancer cells have spread to other organs in the body, such as the lungs, lymph nodes, bones, skin, liver, or brain.
At stage 4, the TNM designation helps delineate the extent of the disease. A higher number indicates a more widespread disease. Generally speaking, stage 4 breast cancer is described as:
T: T1, T2, T3 or T4, depending on the area and/or size of the primary tumor.
N1: The cancer has spread to the lymph nodes
M1: Illness has spread to other places in the body
Breast Cancer Awareness
People are now more aware of breast cancer. Breast cancer awareness efforts have helped people to learn what their risk factors are, how they can reduce their risk level, what symptoms they should be on the lookout for, and what type of screening they should have.
Breast Cancer Awareness Month is held every October, but many people spread it throughout the year.
Summary
Financial support for breast cancer has helped create advances in breast cancer diagnosis and treatment. Breast cancer survival rates have increased, and the number of deaths associated with the disease has continued to decline, in large part due to factors such as early detection, new personalized treatment approaches, and a better understanding of the disease.
