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Dr. Andrew Rynne
MD
Dr. Andrew Rynne

Family Physician

Exp 50 years

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What Does Reoccurance Of Invasive Ductal Carcinoma Grade 2 ER And PR Positive Suggest?

 This is the question I have for her:
 
In May of this year I had a reocurrence of invasive ductal carcinoma, grade 2 ER and PR positive.
the lump was close to the surface of my breast and 3 doctors said it was nothing not to worry they thought it was just a clogged oil gland or hair folicle

I really pushed my oncologist to do a biopsy so he sent me back to My surgical oncologist who did a punch biopsy on the lump. He too thought it was nothing to worry about. Then the results came back as positive for IDC.

the path report stated that it was multifocal with the largest focus being 2mm and a seprate smaller foci that was .5mm in size and they were seprated by 1.5 MM

So I was told by my oncologist and surgical oncologist that i needed a mastectomy so i did a double mastectomy. When I got my path report back from my mastectomy, it stated their was no trace of any cancer not even a single cell???? I find this to be very odd since I have IDC, i know the pattern is irregular and it spreads so not to find even a single cell is weird to me.

Could my punch biopsy have been wrong? Or switched? or does this happen
 
 
Thu, 5 Feb 2015
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Oncologist, Surgical 's  Response
Hi. Although it is a theoretical possibility that your pathology report got mixed up, it doesnt happen practically at good centres. A more logical explanation is that the tumor was so small that all of it got removed in the biopsy specimen only. Also, it is not possible to see every cell in the specimen and comment upon them since there are trillions of them. What the pathologist does is to take random samples and check them for tumor presence.
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What Does Reoccurance Of Invasive Ductal Carcinoma Grade 2 ER And PR Positive Suggest?

Hi. Although it is a theoretical possibility that your pathology report got mixed up, it doesnt happen practically at good centres. A more logical explanation is that the tumor was so small that all of it got removed in the biopsy specimen only. Also, it is not possible to see every cell in the specimen and comment upon them since there are trillions of them. What the pathologist does is to take random samples and check them for tumor presence.