Ask a Pathologist: Breast Cancer
Confused about a breast cancer diagnosis? Pathologists on your care team, like Carey August, MD, FCAP, provide valuable, vital information to help manage diagnosis and treatment.
Testing HER2 status provides essential information to guide breast cancer care. Dr. August explains how pathologists can use different types of tests—dubbed IHC and FISH—for precise HER2 assessments, which are impacting treatment in promising new ways.
Dr. August explains how pathologists manage biopsy tissues so that some predictive tests can be conducted later, even if they weren’t ordered immediately after surgery.
Dr. August explains how pathologists analyze microscopic details about your cancer, including tumor size and how contained or invasive it is. These factors will help determine if you need chemo, radiation, or perhaps more surgery.
Lymphatic invasion, also known as lymphovascular invasion or LVI, is a factor that helps determine the best next steps for your treatment—like whether you need radiation therapy. Here, Dr. August shares images and explains how pathologists apply their expertise to make the diagnosis under a microscope.