Want to know why it's important to get copies of your breast cancer pathology reports? We will teach you all about it.
When you're diagnosed with breast cancer
Critical information is located in your pathology reports.
Information about your cancer and the treatment that you're going to have.
Ask your breast cancer specialists for copies of all of your pathology reports . After all this information actually
belongs to you.
It's
information about your cancer to help guide you to learn more about your breast cancer and to have as a
reference in the future. In this lesson, I'm going to teach you about what a breast biopsy
Pathology report is and the information that's important within it. I'm going to share with you why you must get a copy of your operative
surgical pathology report. It gives you information about your surgery and your cancer. I'm also gonna
tell you why you should ask for copies of
your operative report from your breast cancer surgeon
and their history and physical, (H&P) which is a document and a wonderful summary of
everything they know about your cancer up to the point of your surgery. So let's get started. What is a breast biopsy
pathology report
Well, this is your first piece of information about your breast cancer, and it comes in sequence in a timeline.
So let me explain. The first bit of information after you undergo a biopsy of the lump in your breast,
hopefully with a needle, by a radiologist or a breast surgeon.
About a day or two or three you get the first piece of information and that is, most importantly, whether it's a cancer or precancerous
and
secondly what type of cancer possibly the cell type whether it's a lobular cancer or a
ductal cancer. Now
once the pathologist, who's looking at under the microscope to figure out what's going on, knows
it's a cancer, then they take slides of your cancer and run additional studies.
And there are three receptors that are critical in making decision about how to treat you. The
first two receptors come out about two to four days after your initial biopsy.
They are called the estrogen receptor and the progesterone receptor. And the report tells you whether they're positive and if so how strongly positive.
Or they're negative. The third receptor, which is also important called Her2.
Her2
comes out about four or five days after your initial biopsy and sometimes, it's
Unclear whether it's positive or negative and they run additional tests that can take up to a week
so
Putting all these receptors together
Is important for your doctors to guide you in your treatment. So even with a breast biopsy
pathology report, after it's been completed
there's about a twenty to thirty percent chance that your doctors will already know that your receptor pattern
suggests you might need chemotherapy.
So it's important to ask them for a copy of this report, but also ask them if your receptor pattern suggests you might need
chemotherapy. What's an operative pathology report?
Well when you have surgery for your breast cancer it achieves two things. Number one,
it removes your cancer
But just as important it tells you the stage of your cancer and gives your physicians more
information after looking at all under the microscope and
about how to best treat your cancer.
This report comes out about three to five days after your surgery, so let me give you an example.
Let's say you
have a small one centimeter cancer.You go to surgery, the doctor takes it out and does a lumpectomy and
checks a couple of nodes underneath your arm called a sentinel node biopsy. The
pathologist gets that tissue and over three to five days
cuts it up looks at it under the microscope to tell you
whether
the cancer
has good margins around it, meaning taking the cancer out get good normal tissue around it. How big the tumor is and
also, they check the lymph nodes
looking at them underneath the microscope to determine whether cells have traveled from the breast to the lymph nodes.
So that can put you at a stage zero one two three
Or four and that's all discussed in a different lesson called "Breast Cancer Stage" at the "Breast Cancer School for Patients."
What it also tells you in addition to stage is that
the information we get from that report will tell your medical
oncologist or your surgeon that either one you need more surgery, or two, can help guide whether you might need chemotherapy or not need
chemotherapy based on multiple factors ,a lot of it has to do with whether you have cancer
in your lymph nodes that you otherwise didn't know about.
So when you return to see your surgeon, generally about a week after your breast cancer surgery,
just to see how you're doing, check the incisions and go over the results, always ask for a copy of
your operative pathology reports. Why ask for your breast surgeons operative report and History and Physical?
Well your operative report is a bit technical
but it does list the exact surgery that they did, generally gives the rationale why and any unusual
findings that might have come during surgery,
to use as future reference mostly to share with physicians in the future that you might see
if you move to another town or out of the region.
Your History and Physical is a document that really is a summary of who you are,
what your medical status is and
most importantly, what information your surgeon has put together and the rationale for the type of surgery that
they were planning to do. So it's a fantastic summary of your
cancer up to that point of surgery. Remember more happens after surgery and more decisions are made.
But it's a good summary of how you presented with your cancer, and why they did a surgery. This information
over time, in general, about your breast cancer...
you'll start to forget the details and if in 5 10 20 years and you're living elsewhere
it is next to impossible to get copies of these reports from the original surgeon who may not be
practicing anymore and the hospital may struggle
finding it for you.
So now's the time to get this wonderful
bit of information about your surgery and the summary of your cancer care up to that point to keep for your records
so you can refer to it later.
Your breast cancer pathology reports have critical information that guides your treatment.
And they actually belong to you!
So make sure to get copies of these reports to learn more about your cancer and to have for reference in the future.
To learn more about breast cancer
pathology reports visit the Breast Cancer School for Patients, where we teach you everything you need to know.
We're here to help you get the best possible breast cancer care in your community.
Register on our website to get our list of questions to prepare you for your next doctor visit.