Final path questions?

PAYTONnPRESLEYSmomma

I had a few questions hopefully some of you can answer. Quick back story on me I am 34 and my BC was found due to an early mammogram for other unrelated issues. They saw calcifications and biopsied it assuring me it was nothing (boy were they WRONG). My biopsy came back IDC 1.2mm focus in a background of DCIS 5mm. I had my lumpectomy and SNB done last Thursday and I had my follow appt with the surgeon today. It came back clean nodes (thank god), large enough cleanmargins and the path report states "residual ductal carcinoma in situ, 1.6cm in size/extent" also says "no invasive carcinoma identified in current lumpectomy specimen.

How can that be? Did the biopsy remove it all? Or was it missed in the lumpectomy itself? I should of asked the surgeon this but didn't think of it till after I read the path myself.

Also it says I am ER+ and PR+ (Which he said was a good thing) but Her-2/neu had QNS (quantity not sufficient enough for analysis). Why do you think that is? What does that exactly mean?

Thank you in advance

Jenny

SpecialK

Glad your surgery was successful and that you had clear margins and negative nodes. My assumption would be that the invasive component was removed in your biopsy and no additional IDC was found within the removed DCIS. If there was no IDC to test for Her2 I would further assume they indicated this by the QNS. DCIS is often not tested for Her2 as it is not felt that the Her2 status changes treatment in the absence of an invasive component.

kcat2013

As SpecialK said the IDC probably was all removed during the biopsy. However, if it's important to you, you could ask your surgeon to have your second opinion on your pathology done. I had a bunch of DCIS and only a small amount of IDC also and the initial path from surgery didn't find the IDC (which we knew was there from the biopsy). My surgeon sent the tumor for second look and this one found the IDC.

Kendra