Update on Breast Cancer Staging
The newest edition of the AJCC’s Staging Manual is out and there are some changes to breast cancer staging which took effect January 1, 2010. Several updates in the new edition I felt were good include:
- Moving T0/T1 tumors with only micrometases in the axillary nodes to stage IB from the IIA category.
- Re-affirming the clinical diagnosis of inflammatory carcinoma and what dermal involvement by carcinoma means in terms of T classification.
- Creating the M0(mol+) category for positive molecular studies without other clinical or radiographic evidence of disease, thus not changing the M classification in these patients to M1 (stage IV).
- The new recommendations on how to stage patients who have received pre-operative neoadjuvant chemotherapy.
I’ve updated my prior post on breast cancer staging to reflect many of the changes, but I did not include them all as it would be too lengthy. If you want to read the comprehensive chapter on the new guidelines for breast cancer staging click here.