Amber Hassan, Imrana Tanvir, Rizwan Ullah, Sabiha Riaz.
Pathological assessment of breast carcinoma specimens undergoing neoadjuvant chemotherapy.
Asian J Allied Health Sci Jan ;3(3):07-11.

Breast Carcinoma (BC) is the frequent type of diagnosed cancers in females. Objective: To determine the pathological assessment of breast carcinoma specimens undergoing neoadjuvant chemotherapy. Methods: The cross sectional study was conducted at Aznostics the diagnostic Centre, Lahore. Forty cases of local wide excision and mastectomies were taken and were fixed in 10% formalin. Hematoxylin and eosin staining was done on the representative sections to observe the pathological changes that occurred after a minimum of 4 cyc l e s of neoadjuvant chemotherapy. Miller Payne system of classification was used for the pathological assessment of breast tumor in patients going thr ough ne o adjuv ant chemo the r apy . Results: Forty cases were included in the study. Mostly having histological grades 3 and 2. In all, complete pathological response (pCR) was observed in 7(17.5%) patients according to Miller Payne Classification (grade 5). Incomplete response is observed in 33 cases, out of which 5 (12.5 %) cases showed Miller Payne Classification grade 4, 8(20%) cases showed grade 3, 17(42.5.5%) belongs to grade 2 and 3 (7.5%) cases showed Miller Payne chemotherapy effect grade 1. Only one case with pCR reported ductal carcinoma in situ. 7 patients showed lymphovascular invasion and in remaining 31 cases no lymphovascular invasion is identified. Conclusions: Neoadjuvant therapy is currently a suitable treatment modality for the breast carcinoma patients. However, the pathological evaluation is still considered as a gold standard for the exact diagnosis of cancer. The role of a pathologist cannot be ignored in this regard. Pathologic assessment as a prognostic marker is still a gold standard for patient's adjuvant for research and clinical trials.

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