Pathology Meets Biology: the New Era of Breast Cancer Staging

AbstractPurpose of ReviewBreast cancer is now recognized to be a very heterogeneous disease. This complexity was recently reflected in the newest American Joint Committee on Cancer (AJCC) breast cancer staging, implemented in 2018. Although it seems very daunting, the new staging is based on both the anatomical extent of the disease and the prognostic factors such as hormonal and HER2 status, grade of the tumor, and genomic assays providing information regarding risk of recurrence. The purpose of this review is to illustrate the reasoning for the change in previous, solely an anatomically based breast cancer staging system and to report the updates.Recent FindingsThe research showed that evaluation of breast cancer through immunohistochemistry and utility of genomic assays provides substantial prognostic information.SummaryThe combination of anatomic and prognostic factors has a tremendous impact on outcome predictive abilities of the staging system for each affected individual.
Source: Current Breast Cancer Reports - Category: Cancer & Oncology Source Type: research