After a breast biopsy or breast surgery, a pathologist does some tests on the cells or tissue that your doctor removes from your breast. The pathologist writes the results in a pathology report and gives this to your doctor.
The pathology report helps you and your doctors decide which treatment(s) are best for you. You can ask your doctor to explain what the report means, and any words in it that you don’t understand. You can ask your doctor for a copy of the pathology report for you to keep.
The pathology report will vary depending on what type of breast cancer you have. The report will probably include information about the following:
- Your diagnosis – for example DCIS, early breast cancer, advanced breast cancer.
- Size and location of the cancer – the size and location(s) of your cancer affect what treatments your doctor(s) recommend.
- Surgical margin – after a surgical biopsy or breast surgery, the surgeon removes the cancer and some healthy looking breast tissue around it. The healthy looking breast tissue is called the surgical margin. If there are no cancer cells (or very few cancer cells) in the healthy looking tissue, it’s likely that all of the cancer was removed from your breast. In this case, the surgical margin is said to be ‘clear’. If there are several cancer cells in the healthy looking tissue, it is likely that not all the cancer was removed from your breast. In this case, you will probably need to have more surgery to remove more breast tissue. This might involve having a mastectomy.
- Grade of the cancer – the pathologist examines the cancer
cells and grades them as:
- High grade (Grade 3).
- Intermediate grade (Grade 2).
- Low grade (Grade 1).
- Hormone receptor status – the report may show whether or not there are hormone receptors on your cancer cells. If there are hormone receptors, this means the growth of your cancer is affected by hormones. This will affect whether hormonal therapy may be considered.
- Lymph node status – the report will show whether there are cancer cells in the lymph nodes in your armpit. This will affect whether systemic treatments such as chemotherapy and hormonal therapy are recommended.
