Have You Heard of Stage Zero Breast Cancer?

People may be aware that there are different stages of breast cancer, but few have heard of "Stage 0."

Sandy D. Kotiah, M.D., a board-certified medical oncologist, director of The Neuroendocrine Tumor Center at Mercy and a member of Medical Oncology and Hematology at Mercy, says cancer is a spectrum, explaining that people don't start out with a normal cell and it becomes cancer the next day—it evolves over time.

"You go from a normal cell to a little bit damaged cell, a little bit more damage, looks a little funny, and then it becomes invasive cancer that has the potential to spread. So, ‘Stage 0’ is the step before that. We call it ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS). And I think of it as a pre-cancer lesion, and half of them will become cancer, half of them won't. Since we don't have a way of knowing which one of them, which lesion will convert to cancer, we tend to remove it," Dr. Kotiah said.

Dr. Kotiah further noted that surgery cures about 97% of those cases. The next question for these patients is, "How do we prevent this from happening again?" That's where radiation or hormonal blocking medication may come into play.

View Mercy medical oncologist Dr. Sandy Kotiah’s interview regarding Stage 0 (Zero) breast cancer.