Diagnosis and staging of breast cancer – Road map to the treatment.
Treatment of any cancer begins with confirmation of diagnosis.
How do we confirm diagnosis of breast cancer?
It’s called a triple assessment – that means it has 3 parts.
First part is a clinical assessment. It involves a qualified doctor to clinically examine the patient’s both breasts and arm pits. To see for the size of the lump, any changes in nipple or skin and any other finding.
The second part involves taking a small biopsy or a needle biopsy of the lump under local anaesthesia. It is important to remember that doing a biopsy DOES NOT lead to spread of the disease. It’s absolutely safe to do it. Along with doing histopathology testing for the cancer we also perform hormone testing called immunohistochemistry testing to see the response of the lump to hormones in the body.
The final part of the triple assessment is imaging- for breast we recommend a xray of the breasts called digital mammography and a sonography of the breasts.. mammography helps to also ensure for any other hidden lumps.
Once with the help of this triple assessment we have confirmed the diagnosis of carcinoma we do the staging that is we check for spread of the cancer to any other part of the body.
With these tests we get the clinical staging of the disease.
Stage of the disease , age of the patient , location of tumour , understanding and the financial status of the patients guides us to decide the type of the treatment to be offered to the patient
In my next blog i shall discuss the different treatment options for breast cancer