Grade
The grading of a cancer in the breast depends on the microscopic similarity of breast cancer cells to normal breast tissue, and classifies the cancer as well differentiated (low grade), moderately differentiated (intermediate grade), and poorly differentiated (high grade), reflecting progressively less normal appearing cells that have a worsening prognosis. Although grading is fundamentally based on how biopsied, cultured cells behave, in practice the grading of a given cancer is derived by assessing the cellular appearance of the tumor. The closer the appearance of the cancer cells to normal cells, the slower their growth and the better the prognosis. If cells are not well differentiated, they will appear immature, will divide more rapidly, and will tend to spread. Well differentiated is given a grade of 1, moderate is grade 2, while poor or undifferentiated is given a higher grade of 3 or 4 (depending upon the scale used).
The Nottingham (also called Elston-Ellis) modification of the Scarff-Bloom-Richardson grading system, is recommended, which grades breast carcinomas by adding up scores for tubule formation, nuclear pleomorphism, and mitotic count, each of which is given 1 to 3 points. The scores for each of these three criteria and then added together to give an overall final score and corresponding grade as follows.
The grading criteria are as follows:
Read more about this topic: Breast Cancer Classification
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