What does t3bn1m0, emvi positive, margin negative mean?

hi there.. im sure the m0 means no spread.. which is good.. do you have a treatment plan yet?.. im sure others will come along and help out on here.. but keep positive xx

Hi Ddd213. Yes it is like being in a parallel universe - your life becomes full of scans, appointments, letters, numbers and jargon that you’ve never heard of. I didn’t know anyone else who had had bowel cancer until I was diagnosed but I’ve made a lot of friends on both here and the bowel Cancer uk site who’ve helped get me through it.

I’ve attached a link below to a booklet about diagnosis and staging which I hope will help

https://bowelcancerorguk.s3.amazonaws.com/Publications/YourPathway_BowelCancerUK.pdf

I think the T3/b are pretty much the same thing and indicate how far the tumour has grown into the bowel wall. N1 means they suspect that 1-3 lymph nodes might be affected. M0 means there is no spread to other organs which is good news. EMVI positive means that they suspect there may be some form of vascular invasion. The margin negative I’m not sure about. They talk about clear margins which refers to the area around the tumour which they like to remove to make sure they’ve got it all away so I’m not sure if margin negative means that there isn’t a clear margin at the moment or that there is no cancer in the margin if you get my drift?

However this is an estimated staging and the official staging will be after surgery when everything is sent off to the pathology lab. I was suspected EMVI positive when first diagnosed but EMVI negative after chemoradio and surgery. My friend was T3N1 but was found to have no affected lymph nodes after surgery so was downgraded to T2.

There are a few posts on here regarding Papillon which you can read by typing it into the search box but I think it is for T1-3 with minimal or no lymph node involvement.

Please stay away from google - ask anything you want on here - there is no question too daft or embarrassing and please try not to get caught up in survival statistics - they are out of date and everyone is an individual. I was told about the mortality rates before my op but the surgeon explained that the figures included everyone who’d died within a year of surgery regardless of the reason so it could be from old age or being hit by a bus and it would still get included in the stats.

Sorry for the long post but hope it’s been of some help

Take care

Karen x

Hi, just seen this, and hope hubby is getting on ok. I always like it to being a rabbit in headlights, as it it totally surreal.

My pre op diagnosis for rectal cancer was T3N1M0 which changed to T3N0 V1 M0 after and I think I am a T3b  The V1 is the vascular invasion, which together with the T3 diagnosis and a large tumour (possibly the b bit?) meant I am doing chemo after a low AR. No chemo etc before, just the barrage of tests. The chemo after is 30 weeks of 5FU to mop up any baddies, a common regime but I cannot find anyone else on it!!

They all seem to know what they are doing, and the colorectal nurse is generally a good first point of info, and reassurance.

Hope all is going well.

Good afternoon,

I had a right hemi colectomy on 13th June 2019.

The lab results following surgery showed a pT3N1(2/17) poorly differentiated adenocarcinoma of the ascending colon. EMVI positive. Lymph-vascular invasion positive. No perineural invasion.

I am a bit confused as to what this means.

I started chemo Oxaliplatin and Capecitabine on 13th August for 6 cycles. I have had to stop treatment because my heart started giving palpations (I also have Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy). Seeing cardiologist soon to make sure the ticker is ok to restart the chemo.

My god is the chemo awful - I have so far had all symptoms listed.

Does anyone else have problems with chemo and what helped them get through it.

My life started to go to hell when I went for a routine blood test to find out what I was lacking due to going through menopause!!!!!

I just want my life back.

Paula xx  

Hi PROBO ,

Welcome to the forum . If you look at some of the post above Karen has put in a good link with good explanations. Roughly it means they look at your results post surgery and decide on that based if you need chemo . They consider a few factors after the most important one of being operable , so well done on getting through that , they consider lymph nodes , cell type and vascular involvement and margins etc . Some people might have one or two and they decide mope  up chemo is beneficial. Given two lymph nodes are involved and your cell type they consider you to benefit from it . However it’s all relative as it’s all removed and the rest is just a precaution. That is the most important thing .

To put all that into context my mum missed the operable pathway initially as she had a tumour that had breached everything and had spread to her liver . Set up camp there and had grown five substantial tumours . So she had to go straight to chemo . It did a wonderful job and got significant shrinkage that then allowed her to become operable . Ten years later she is still here ! 

My mum had horrible , horrible side effects . The first year she struggled through frightened they would stop treatment . The second year cut her dose by 20% and most of her side effects disappeared. Her scan was excellent and her tumours disappeared off the scan . They will not leave you struggling on . They will make adjustments to help you . They slowed my mum’s infusion down and added other stuff to help her . They gave her it over six hours . What a difference a dose reduction made .

I hope we can help you get back to your old life very soon . Feel free to ask anything . Everyone is happy to help and very supportive .

take care ,

Court