Anyone who was Stage 1 Grade 2 who did not do chemo?

@dtad - That is interesting. Do you have links to any of the articles?

dyad and 39andhip: I've read that as well. It was awhile back and I'm not sure if I still have the articles bookmarked, but I'll take a look.

I am three years out, stage 1C tumor, grade 2, oncotype 19, IDC in R breast and DCIS in L. Only able to tolerate Tamoxifen for 10 months, no chemo. Still NDE.

gammyyet.

Just curious. If you choose not to have chemo why get oncotype?

i refused six months fec chemo had three weeks radiotherapy then on arimidex then exemerstane then letrozole i was told the chemo was a kind of insurance policy and advised strongly to take it however i decided against it i went through hell on the tablets hence the three different ones ive now been discharged and put on another five years of tamoxifen ten days ago im having strange heads still in pain and taking deep breaths like panic attacks if these don't subside in back to see my gp next week it was Sept 2010 when I had my op lumpectomy and sentinel nodes two were attacked so a month later had full node clearance still in pain from tablets and trigger finger from letrozole but keep plodding through im now 72 years old i love gardening so this keeps me going l. regards Sandy

I was stage 1 grade 2, ER/PR+, Her2+. Oncotype score was 19, so I was on the very grey border but chose chemo just so I could have peace of mind that I did everything I could. It was 4 rounds of TC. Ovaries were removed September 2015, and I had had a hysterectomy 7 or 8 years ago due to a large fibroid.

Was only able to make it through 2 rounds of chemo due to whole body hives and almost daily migraines, but the onco thought I did get some benefit from it and was OK with me stopping.
Now I just take Arimidex. NED yet, and although it's only been a year, I expect it to stay that way since I had a double mx.

My MO and NP told me that grading a tumor was subjective and decided on by the pathologist looking at the slide. As an example, on biopsy I was a grade 3 but after lumpectomy, another pathologist deemed me grade 2. I would go more on the oncotype score, although I wasn't given the test because I was Her2+++ so it was pointless.

So my message is, don't read too much into the grading system and trust your MO.

My ultrasound-guided biopsy said 7-9mm, IDC grade 2, ER+/PR+/HER2- Surgeon preliminarily staged me IA, pending nodes & margins, of course. I asked her NP at the pre-op teaching session about OncotypeDX, but she said they could only do it on surgically excised, not core-biopsy, tumor tissue; that most women clearly won't need it (because they obviously will or won’t be chemo candidates)--so because of the expense they save it for only those in the “gray area." (Wouldn't elaborate as to what constitutes “gray area").

Surgical path report confirmed IDC grade 2 (nuclear 2, tubule 3, mitotic rate 1), highly ER/PR+ and HER2- (+1, which was considered “negative" rather than “equivocal"). Clean margins, 4 nodes (2 sentinel, 2 hitchhikers) removed, all negative. BUT the tumor size was 1.3mm. Still Stage IA, but tumor size was now t1c. Hello, “gray area." Told my MO I didn't want chemo because of other comorbidities, and she said she'd be very surprised if the OncotypeDX came back high enough to recommend it. Score came back 16, at the higher end of “low"--and she showed me the graphs that indicated that at almost age 65, my chance of 10-yr recurrence was 8% on an AI+radiation alone, but adding chemo would bring it down to only 7%--the risks of chemo outweighed any potential benefit in my case. Acc. to the AdjuvantOnline tool, chemo would give me only an extra year of life....with no guarantee as to the quality of that extra year.

Mind you, had I been 44 or even 54 when diagnosed, I might have considered chemo. But bearing in mind that chemo kills only rapidly-dividing cells (malignant or normal), and my cancer, a Luminal A type, was slower-growing and probably wouldn't really respond to chemo, I might have been persuaded even then to have forgone it.

Hello,

I am curious about the same thing as I am leaning towards NO CHEMO as well. I am a Stage 1 but not sure of my Grade. Have you had many responses? I am new to the site and I'm learning how to navigate it but I have not yet figured out how to see responses to posts.

stage 1, grade 2, oncotype 19 and chemo was not recommended

I read generally that between Grades 2 & 3, the most important factor is degree of differentiation from surrounding normal cells, followed by mitotic rate. Tubule score was not as important. Mine was tubule score 3 (the higher the proportion of tubules to overall tumor cells, the lower the tubule score and thus the better), mitotic rate 1 (slowest-dividing) and “moderately differentiated” (i.e., moderately different-looking from surrounding normal cells), adding up to Grade 2. Grade 1 is “well-differentiated” (very different-looking from and fewer than surrounding normal cells) and Grade 3 “poorly differentiated” (nearly identical to surrounding cells which are also not “normal” looking). So I don’t see how Grade 2 should be relabeled Grade 3--there really is a middle ground. Most Luminal A tumors are Grades 1 or 2.

ChiSandy - you seem to know so very much about the details of BC - your posts are extremely helpful. Perhaps you can answer a questions for me. In post-menopausal women, it a high ER% better in terms of anti-hormone treatment? My initial biopsy showed 100% ER+ with strong staining which indicated to me that my ILC was VERY driven by Estrogen. Does it stand to reason, then, that any remaining cells will be VERY responsive to AI (or Tamoxifen)?

Your thoughts?

I had colliad Mucous carcinoma only 5% present of women have this it is rare. I was stage 1 grade2, no lymph node involvement , no chemo, had radiation thru a Savi, all clear margins after lumpectomy after everything was over I was put on Hormone Receptor. This was in Aug. 2015, 8 months later came back in same breast on the opposite side, going back in for surgery 5/25 this year, This time it is under a vessel my biopsy is undertermin they don't know what it is just stated it should be removed.

I was stage IB, grade 2

I was diagnosed at 27, in 1999 and they didn't have the Oncotype scoring then.

I didn't do chemo (my oncologist and 'tumor board' didn't feel I needed it) just lumpectomy, node dissection, radiation, and 2.5 years of Tamoxifen.

I'm 16 years out