Did everyone get a "Stage" of their BC?

They can't stage it until you have the surgery to get the tumor out (lumpectomy, most likely).  They can learn from the MRI  about how big it is & the biopsy will tell what kind of cancer you have (IDC, DCIS, etc) and what grade it is, but not the stage.  The grade just tells them how aggressive or non-aggressive it is. 1 is not aggressive, 3 is aggressive.  They can also tell if your tumor is hormone receptive. After you get the tumor out they will be able to tell you exactly what the stage is and how big the tumor is. If it is ER+/PR+, they will probably do an Oncotype, which is a test that helps determine whether you would benefit from chemo or not. Most women don't have to do chemo, by the way. If your Oncotype is low, they may just recommend radiation and hormone suppression. 

good luck to you!

I was never given a stage. I did read about the tumor sizes and lymph node results in my pathology report after surgery and came up with my own conclusion after reading some literature on stages and what they mean.

People ask me too - I just tell them what I came up with based on the above.

I was given a tentative stage after the mammogram and ultrasound of Stage 1 which was based on the tumor size... After my lumpectomy the stage was confirmed as Stage 1 and then Grade 1 was added... The pathology report also indicated no lymph involvement

My mom was told Stage 2 at diagnosis but after surgery it was bumped to Stage 3C. That said, the Doctor said that they realllllly try not to focus on the stage and just getting it treated and the person better. I hate when people ask what stage it is....

I did after my Path report. As it turned out my BS staged my tumor incorrectly according to my Oncologist. He staged it 2a- she said should be 1b. Doctors can deny all they want that it doesn't matter what stage you are. Try telling that to a Stage IV lady. I get not fixating on it but it does matter and so does the grade. My BS was quick to point that out too. There is a big difference between grades 1 and 3. If it didn't make any difference why aren't the treatments all the same?

I wanted the whole skinny when I was DX not what I wanted to hear but just the facts. You can't disguise them. I do avoid reading expiration dates though because those are truly estimates.

Diane

I was told at my diagnosis yesterday that they do not stage breast cancer anymore and do no use it, they only give it a grade

Of course the type of BC matters. Some are more aggressive than others. I have IDC which I was told is the most common BC. My BS told me I had a wimpy cancer whatever that really means. Thing is he said that to a friend who had BC as well. I think at the timehe was trying to talk me off the ledge.

Diane

Don't stage breast cancer anymore? It's been a few years since my dx, but grade doesn't tell the whole story. Has any one more recently dx'ed heard that as well

mitchells, may I ask where in the world you're located? One would think there'd be a universal standard of care, but on these boards we've seen it can vary dramatically based on which country you're in and what financial & physical resources are available to pay for treatment, do procedures and even train care teams.

Here in the US, I've NEVER heard that they don't stage any more, or that only grade matters. To put it delicately, bull...t One cannot be definitively staged before the tumor is removed surgically, measured and the nodes are biopsied to check for node involvement. Often, though, one's tumor can be preliminarily staged after diagnostic imaging and biopsy--based on estimated size as observed in imaging and whether signs of nodal involvement are absent or present. In my case, it was IDC (so it wasn't stage 0), they thought it was <1cm and assumed for the time being my nodes would be negative, so it was preliminarily staged as IA. After surgery, it was 1.3 cm, and the nodes were negative, so it remained stage IA. Other things that the biopsy determines are the type of cancer: DCIS, IDC, ILC, LCIS, and the rarer types. That is probably the most important threshhold determination. Next comes grade--which is a formula based on how different it looks from normal cells, how hard it is to distinguish nuclei from the rest of the cell, how many “tubules" are formed in the tumor and most crucially, the mitotic score (or how fast the cells are dividing and thus how fast the tumor is growing). Grades are 1, 2 or 3 (1 being the slowest and 3 the most aggressive)--but in rare cases some 3s don't get chemo and some 1s do--based on other characteristics such as size, node involvement, hormone-receptor status and HER2 expression and even patient age (younger women generally get more aggressive cancers).

So maybe in your neck of the woods they don't stage tumors before they're removed and the nodes biopsied (they don't want to count their chickens before they're hatched), but grade is usually easily determined on initial biopsy (usually the hormone-receptor and HER2 status is too, but not always). But make no mistake--after the tumor is removed, stage is a very big deal and along with receptor & HER2 status, is often the prime determinant of treatment going forward.

I was given my stage, not sure how. Maybe pathology write up. Anyway, not all ER/PR+ get oncotyping either, as one member claimed above. I didn't. I had + nodes and 2 c. and so it was chemo for me, regardless of hormone status. But I didn't argue against chemo anyway--I wanted every tx I could get.

Claire

I an sorry if I offended anyone by saying the stage doesn't matter. It isn't truly what I meant, more like the doctors try to take the emphasis off of the staging and more on just fighting the disease no matter what stage you are. So if you are a stage 1 or a stage 4, you continue to fight hard.

We are in Ontario and my mom had a full body and bone scan prior to any surgery or treatments being done to ensure there were no mets.