Last Updated: May 18, References. This article was co-authored by Joshua Ellenhorn, MD. Joshua Ellenhorn, MD, is a board certified surgeon with advanced training in the fields of surgical oncology, minimally invasive surgery, and robotic surgery. He runs a private practice at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, California and is a nationally recognized leader in surgery, cancer research, and surgical education. Ellenhorn has trained more than 60 surgical oncologists and has spent over 18 years in practice at the City of Hope National Medical Center, where he was a professor and the chief of the Division of General and Oncologic Surgery.
Going through breast cancer treatment | Breast Cancer Now
Breast cancer is staged from 0 to 4. The stage reflects tumor size, lymph node involvement, and how far cancer may have spread. Other things, such as hormone receptor status and tumor grade, are also factored into staging. This information is crucial to making treatment decisions and understanding your general outlook. Keep reading to learn how breast cancer is staged, how that affects treatment, and what you can expect.
Breast cancer is the second most common cancer in women after skin cancer. Mammograms can detect breast cancer early, possibly before it has spread. Explore the links on this page to learn more about breast cancer prevention, screening, treatment, statistics, research, clinical trials, and more.
Some women suffering from breast cancer refuse treatment. Some choose faith in a higher power over medicine, some feel the treatment will be worse than the disease, others may distrust the medical establishment. Doctors cannot be expected to give an exact prognosis. When a woman is diagnosed as being at an advanced stage of breast cancer, her doctor may tell her that she has mere months to live, but a variety of factors could result in an individual living longer than expected. According to a Mayo Clinic website discussing the staging of breast cancer, the staging of breast cancer is a way of measuring how large a breast cancer tumor is and how far the cancer has spread.