Breast cancer grows up in different stages and can be categorized in almost 6 stages.
The first stage (Stage 0) is what is known as non-invasive breast cancer . This typically means that the cancer cells are not yet breaking out of the breast where they started or invading surrounding normal tissue.
The next stage (stage 1) is categorized as invasive, which as one might expect, involves the cancer cells invading surrounding tissue. It should be noted that at this time no lymph nodes are involved.At this stage the size of the tumor is not more than 2 centimeters.
The next stage is stage 2 - this stage shows up the invasive breast cancer. The size of the tumor at this stage is more than 2 centimeters. At this stage cancer starts affecting the lymph nodes of the arm pit of same side.It is subdivided into two categories: Stage 2A and Stage 2B
The next stage is the advance stage called stage 3 this stage is also further divided into 2 sub stages, Stage 3A and stage 3B
Stage 4 - this stage shows that breast cancer has spread to different region like arm pit, mammary lymph nodes, clavicular lymph nodes, neck and shoulder and also to the lungs, bones and other surrounding parts. This stage is called as Metastatic cancer stage.