Question: My lumpectomy report says: Invasive ductal carcinoma, two foci, 2.4 cm, combined histologic grade II/III, margins widely free (>5mm), see comment. The comment says there were two tumors, one 1.3 cm and one 0.6 cm, total span 2.4 cm. My question is–my doctor has staged me as IIA (my nodes were negative)–but my tumors only add up to 1.9 cm not 2.4 cm based on the report. Could this be a typo in the report?

Answer: It sounds like you had two separate invasive cancers and the overall span combining both tumors was 2.4 cm. That suggests the tumors were separated by 0.5 cm of non-cancerous breast tissue. I have seen this many times before. If the pathologist said they were two separate tumors, the standard is to stage you based upon the largest SINGLE tumor, not a combination of the two. So your cancer would be a T1cNO — if they have shown you to be free of any metastases that means you are stage I.