Oncotype Question

waiting-to-exhale

I keep hearing people refer to being weakly estrogen or progesterone positive. I am wondering what the cutoff is on this from reading oncotype scoring

My initial pathology report had me strongly er and pr positive based on allred system. However my oncotype test scored my estrogen at 8.7 and my progesterone at 6.5. It seemed low on the chart.

Would this be considered weakly positive? Also, whats more accurate, the pathology testing or oncotype testing?

NancyHB

waiting,

So glad you're asking this question - I've been curious for years now and gotten different responses from my medical team. Biopsy path (surgical path doesn't address it) says I'm ER+ 50%, PR+ <10%, but Oncotype is strongly PR- (can't remember exact number), and barely ER+ (6.6 where 6.5 is negative). I realize most tumors are heterogenous, so it makes more sense to me that Oncotype (which grinds up the sample, instead of taking a sample from a specific point on the tumor) would be a more accurate representation of the true nature of the cancer's genetic make-up. But I'm not a doctor and could be totally wrong. :-)