Breast cancer is one of the common disease in woman today. Breast cancer is evaluated by assessing the size of the tumor and how much it is spreads, this is called staging of breast cancer. It is a way by which your breast cancer treatment can be done efficiently.
The breast cancer is distributed in five stages from stage 0 to stage IV. The staging of your breast cancer is not all ups’. There are other factors too which can affect your diagnosis, this includes type of cancer you have, the growing speed of the breast cancer, your age and health, whether you have history of breast cancer in past and also your hormones may affect your breast cancer growth.
If cancer is detected in your breast, your pathology report will have the information about the stage of your breast cancer and this includes whether the cancer in the breast is limited in a particular area or it has already spreads in other healthy tissues of your breast or other part of your body. Here your breast cancer is characterize on the bases of these four factors which are
- Overall size of the breast cancer
- Is your breast cancer is invasive or non-invasive
- Is your breast cancer in lymph nodes
- Is your cancer has spreads form breast to other parts of the body
As already mentioned, breast cancer is divided into five stages depending on the condition of your cancer. On stage 0, your cancer is on non-invasive and on stage IV, your cancer is spreads on the other part of your body from breast.
These stages help to understand your diagnosis and to make treatment decisions about your breast cancer. These stages are the way to define your breast cancer so that your treatment can be done with proper diagnosis and care.
Stage 0 of Breast Cancer
This is the initial stage of the breast cancer which is used to define non-invasive breast cancer like ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS). In this stage there is no physical evidence found for cancer cells or abnormal cells attacking adjacent normal tissues of your breast. They remain developing in there residual tissue.
Stage I of Breast Cancer
This second stage of breast cancer defines that it is now become little invasive breast cancer which is spreading thought its neighboring normal tissues. This showed up with the tumor of up to two centimeter and still no lymph nodes are caught up.
There is also a possibility of microscopic attacks in stage I of breast cancer in which cancer cells have started to invade the healthy tissues facing of duct or lobule but the attacking cells of cancer can not be measure in access of 1mm in size.
Stage II of Breast Cancer
In this third stage of the breast cancer its characteristics of invasiveness become more prominent, in starting of this stage the breast cancer have no tumor found, but cancer cells are present in lymph nodes near your arms or the tumor in the breast found with not more then 5 cm in size.
Stage III of Breast Cancer
This stage of the breast cancer is much complicated in view of other stages, therefore this stage is further divided in three sub-stages which are
- Stage IIIA of Breast Cancer
- Stage III B/C of Breast Cancer
Stage IIIA of Breast Cancer: In this sub-stage of breast cancer no tumor is found, but the cancer cells are present in lymph nodes which are bunched with other neighboring part of the breast, it is also possible in this sub-stage that the cancer cell may be spreads to lymph node s around your chest bone.
Stage IIIB/C of Breast Cancer: In these stages of breast cancer the tumor may be of any size and now it is spreads around the skin and chest walls of the breast and breast become inflammatory which signs up the redness in large area of breast skin and your breast feels warmer and swollen. After that in C part of this sub-stage the cancer has spread to the lymph nodes above and below of your collarbone and it spreads to lymoph nodes near your chest bone in larger size.
Stage IV of Breast Cancer
This is the final stage of breast cancer, defines the invasive breast cancer in which the cancer has spread to other neighboring body organs of your breast after completely spreading within the breast, these body organs includes lungs, skin, bones, liver or even to your brain.