What My Patients Are Asking: Does A Cancer’s Stage Change If It Spreads or Comes Back Years Later?

Our guest is Dr. Brian Wojciechowski, who practices medical oncology in Delaware County, Pennsylvania at Riddle, Taylor, and Crozer hospitals and also serves as Breastcancer.org's medical adviser. A native of South Philadelphia, he trained at Temple University School of Medicine and Lankenau Medical Center. Dr. Wojciechowski is a sought-after speaker on the topics of medical ethics and the biology of cancer. In one of our Discussion Board threads, people were talking about how a breast cancer is staged, especially if an early-stage cancer spreads or comes back in a place away from the breast. Both the American Cancer Society and the National Cancer Institute websites say that the stage of a breast cancer at first diagnosis doesn’t change. So a woman who was diagnosed in 2010 with stage II disease and then had a recurrence in the bones in 2015 would technically be “stage II with metastatic recurrence to bone,” which is not how most people think and talk about metastatic disease. Dr. Wojciechowski reached out to the American Cancer Society about this, and he joins us today to help us all understand this a little bit better. Listen to the podcast to hear Dr. Wojciechowski each explain: the technical differences between stage IV breast cancer and metastatic breast cancer how prognosis differs for someone diagnosed de novo stage IV and someone who was diagnosed stage II with a metastatic recurrence 2 years later how he talks to his patients about a breast cancer’s stage Running time: 17:23

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