Pathology of Breast Cancer

The pathologist is involved at various steps in the management of patients with breast cancer, beginning with the confirmation of malignancy and ending with the establishment of prognostic and predictive markers. A close collaboration between surgeons and pathologists is mandatory for proper diagnostics of breast cancer, especially during frozen section analysis, gross tumour examination and evaluation of response to neoadjuvant therapy. The pathology report must contain the histological characteristics of the tumour, the classical prognostic and theranostic markers (stage, receptor profile) as well as the surgical margin status. More recently, prognostic parameters obtained by gene expression analysis may complete the report.