So confused by staging

leftshark

I had a bilateral mastectomy in November and I had a 6 cm, grade 2 tumor that’s ER+/PR+/HER2-. Nine out of 15 lymph nodes were FULL of cancer. My CT scan came back clean, and I have a bone scan tomorrow.

My oncologist told me I’m a stage 3 but that under the new staging system I’m a 1B. My surgical oncologist told me I’m a 1B.

There seems to be a great difference in prognosis between Stage 1 and Stage 3 IDC, so I’m super confused.

Can anyone help?

Thanks!! ❤️

sbelizabeth

leftshark, before 2018, staging of breast cancer was according to the TNM (tumor, nodes, metastasis) method.

Starting in 2018, the TNM system added some measures and got a lot more complex:

• Tumor grade
• Estrogen receptor status
• Progesterone receptor status
• HER2-neu status

Your medical oncologist and surgical oncologist might be looking at different staging systems. But keep in mind that our tumors don't care what label our doctors slap on them, and outcomes aren't mathematically calculated by ANY system.

beeline

leftshark, in case you haven't seen it, salamandra posted some great info about the new staging system at the end of this thread (second to last page):

https://community.breastcancer.org/forum/105/topic...

It is very confusing, but as sbelizabeth says, our tumours don't care what labels our doctors put on them and statistics can't tell us what will happen to an individual. I also think it is at least as much an art as a science -- though I will admit to some wishful thinking on my part since with one less positive lymph node I would also be restaged to 1B!