Stages of Breast Cancer

Cancer stage is based on the size of the tumor, whether the cancer is invasive or non-invasive, whether lymph nodes are involved, and whether the cancer has spread beyond the breast.

The purpose of the staging system is to help organize the different factors and some of the personality features of the cancer into categories, in order to:

• best understand your prognosis (the most likely outcome of the disease)


• guide treatment decisions (together with other parts of your pathology report), since clinical studies of breast cancer treatments that you and your doctor will consider are partly organized by the staging system


• provide a common way to describe the extent of breast cancer for doctors and nurses all over the world, so that results of your treatment can be compared and understood

Stage 0

Stage 0 is used to describe non-invasive breast cancers, such as DCIS and LCIS. In stage 0, there is no evidence of cancer cells or non-cancerous abnormal cells breaking out of the part of the breast in which they started, or of getting through to or invading neighboring normal tissue.

Stages of Breast Cancer.