Quick Pathology Question

EastcoastTS, I had the same impression as you did, and did get pathology from my mx surgery. I'm not sure why they wouldn't want to make sure that the cells that they took during the biopsy had the same characteristics as those they removed during the surgery. BC tumors can be heterogeneous and I've read women's posts from these forums where their pathology was different from different samples - and the final pathology report must take them all into consideration. Just curious, did your Oncotype come from the original biopsy sample or the surgical sample? And if it came from the surgical sample, why wouldn't they re-run the ER/PR/Her2? Maybe someone else here can shed some light on this, I am stumped.

Often they don't re-run path if it doesn't change treatment parameters, or if something like OncotypeDx done on the post-surgical sample will re-confirm the biopsy findings. I had biopsy path, then had Mammaprint on a biopsy sample, did not have post-surgical receptors and Her2 run again post-surgically because it would not have changed my treatment going forward - I was bound for chemo/Herceptin/anti-hormonals regardless because even if other areas of the tumor showed differing characteristics the biopsy sample clearly showed ER+ and Her2+ so treatment decisions were based off of those. My understanding is that Oncotype Dx, almost always done on a surgically removed tissue due to the size needed for testing, takes a fairly large sample and grinds the specimen so you are getting a larger tissue sample size with that test than you would with a pathology slide, and it would either confirm, or be discordant with, the receptor/Her2 biopsy status already identified from the biopsy.