Breast Cancer Stages & Treatment:

Women are more prone to cancer of Breasts. Women are advised to feel their breasts every month as a self assessment measure to find if there is any hard mass, it should be brought to the notice of gynecologist for further investigations.

Presence of hard lump in the breast or presence of breast discharge raises    the suspicion of breast cancer although most of the breast lumps are not malignant in nature, but it has a potential of becoming malignant. A negative mammography is not conclusive in ruling out cancer. It has to be supported by other investigations like X-Ray, MRI or ultrasound investigation of breast.

Detection of Early breast cancer suggests that the cancer is localized in the breast only and has not spread to other parts of body by a process called metastasis. Cancer of breast after treatment can reoccur also, described as local recurrence.

There is another stage by the name Locally Advanced Breast Cancer, which indicates the cancer has not spread to other parts, but has attained a big size of 5 centimeters and has it’s roots in the chest muscles and the skin surrounding the breast. The breast cancer in a grown stage affects the lymph nodes in the armpit also these lymph nodes either have binding among themselves or other local structures.

The Secondary Breast cancer is a stage, when the breast cancer has spread to other body organs or tissues like liver and bones.

Process of staging:

The present stage of cancer guides the doctor in knowing how far the cancer has spread. The scanning results and various diagnostic tests give adequate information regarding stage of cancer, which plays an important role in treating the breast cancer properly. The specialist treating breast cancer relies on the TNM stage and degree of cancer for determining the treatment required. TNM staging considers the size of the tumour (T), involvement of Lymph nodes (N) and if the tumour has spread to  any other area of the body indicated by (M) for metastases.