Doctors label cancer by stages. Stages show how much cancer is in your body, how far it has spread and how quickly it may grow.  

Stages help us understand how serious your cancer is. That helps your 博彩网站 Knight Cancer Institute team plan the best treatment.

What is cancer staging?

Tests and information doctors use to determine breast cancer stages include:

• Physical exam
• Imaging, such as a mammogram or MRI
• The tumor’s size
• Whether or how far the cancer has spread to lymph nodes or other parts of the body
• A test called a biopsy, in which doctors look at tissue from the tumor or a lymph node under a microscope
• The cancer’s grade, or how normal or abnormal cancer cells look under a microscope
• Whether the tumor has receptors, a type of protein that can be matched to medications

Breast cancer stages range from 0 to IV (0 to 4). In general, the lower the number, the easier cancer is to treat.

All these factors make breast cancer staging complex and highly individual. It’s best to ask your doctor about your stage and what it means.

Lymph nodes

Lymph nodes are bean-shaped glands found throughout your body. They help fight disease.

Lymph nodes filter a clear liquid that travels through the body. They trap unwanted substances like cancer cells. When breast cancer spreads, it shows up first in nearby lymph nodes. Your care team may remove one or more lymph nodes to look for cancer.

Hormone receptors

Cancer cells sometimes have a type of protein on the surface called a receptor. Hormones — chemicals in the body that act as messengers — can link to these proteins and tell the cancer to grow.

Doctors test breast cancer cells for receptors that link to hormones called estrogen and progesterone. Breast cancer is called:

• ER-positive if it has estrogen receptors
• PR-positive if it has progesterone receptors
• Hormone receptor-positive if it has one or both
• Hormone receptor-negative if it has neither

If a tumor has receptors, doctors can use medications to link to the receptors and block the hormones.

HER2

HER2 stands for “human epidermal growth factor receptor 2.” It is a protein that can cause breast cancer cells to grow faster.

Breast cancer is called HER2-positive if it has higher-than-normal levels of HER2. Like with hormone receptors, doctors can use medications to target HER2 to fight cancer.

If breast cancer has no hormone receptors or HER2, it is called triple negative.

Learn more

• Breast Cancer Stages, American Cancer Society
• Breast Cancer Stages, Breastcancer.org
• Breast Cancer Stages and Staging, Susan G. Komen