Vascular invasion

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A lot of the early staging of cancer seems to be concerned with the size of the original tumour, and whether or not there are cancer cells in the lymph nodes. Cancer cells can travel through the blood as well as the lymph system. Pathology reports from surgery may talk about VI (vascular invasion), or LVI (lympho-vascularinvasion). These are risk factors that do not seem to be well followed up on. I have often replied to other people with my story of finding out somewhat coincidentally that my early stage, but high risk (grade 3 TNBC), that wasn’t in my lymph nodes, had spread to my liver. My primary tumour had vascular invasion. So the message is push for more follow up if these phrases appear on your pathology report or are mentioned to you in passing at your surgical follow up.

For me, TNBC became metastatic TNBC in a flash.

Cloudier over 1 year ago

Thank you for writing this. You are absolutely right and you have given good advice. It is true that someone can have clear nodes, but still go on to develop stage four because spread has occurred using another process. I read your bio, and things developed very quickly for you. I hope you are tolerating immunotherapy. Yesterday I spoke to someone I know who has been stage 4 TNBC for 7 years (3 years ‘clear’ before that). She was telling me about her treatment, she is positive, bright and well at the moment, and she is living life to the full. I had no idea that she had been stage 4 for so long until she told me. Xx

Coddfish over 1 year ago in reply to Cloudier

I look forward to the day when TNBC isn’t just the bucket catch all for cancers that don’t have oestrogen, progesterone or HER2 receptors. It’s becoming more and more obvious there are multiple different mechanisms at play, each of which need to be treated differently.

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Vascular invasion