RakSutkaBreast cancer: the biology, the detection, and how the treatment changed.
A microscope slide tray of stained tissue sections on a laboratory bench under even light
Stained sections on glassEvery route on this site ends at a slide like one of these: imaging locates, the section decides.

Section 01

The disease

This section is about what the tissue is and how a growth in it gets classified. The vocabulary is worth the trouble: most of what happens after a diagnosis follows from where the cells started and whether they have crossed one particular boundary.

5 entries · The tissue, and how it is classified.

Entries in this section

  • A histology slide under a microscope showing branching glandular tissue, viewed down the eyepiece
    01.1 Ducts and lobules

    The tissue is a branching system of ducts ending in lobules, and almost everything that follows depends on which part a growth started in.

  • A pathologist's bench with a double-headed microscope and a tray of slides, adult hands adjusting the stage
    01.2 Carcinoma in situ

    Cells confined within the duct wall are classified separately from those that have crossed it, and that boundary is the whole basis of staging.

  • A stained tissue section photographed through a microscope showing dense irregular cellular structure
    01.3 Invasive carcinoma

    Once the basement membrane is breached the classification changes and so does everything downstream of it.

  • A printed classification chart and a ruler on a laboratory desk under a lamp
    01.4 Grade and stage

    Grade describes how the cells look and stage describes how far they have gone; the two are routinely confused and mean different things.

  • An anatomical diagram drawn on a lecture-theatre blackboard with chalk resting on the ledge
    01.5 How spread was explained

    The nineteenth-century account had the disease moving outward in an orderly way, and it dictated surgical practice for eighty years.

Every entry on this site is one thing that was established, and who established it. The complete set is in the register.