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Invasive carcinoma of no special type, still widely called invasive ductal carcinoma, is the ordinary form of breast cancer and by far the most common. The name means the tumour has no special pattern that would put it in one of the rarer types; everything on the main breast cancer page and its receptor subpages is written about this type unless it says otherwise.
The WHO classification uses invasive breast carcinoma of no special type for the large group of adenocarcinomas that cannot be classified as a special histological type; the 2019 edition keeps the term, treats the former medullary, oncocytic, lipid-rich, glycogen-rich, sebaceous and pleomorphic carcinomas as patterns within it, and grades it by the Nottingham system (Tan 2020). It is then divided clinically by oestrogen receptor, progesterone receptor and HER2 status and, in early disease, by genomic assays such as Oncotype DX, which is how the corpus's HR-positive, HER2-positive and triple-negative pages and their subpages are organised.
How it differs from its parent: it is not a subtype so much as the default; the special types on the sibling pages (lobular, tubular, mucinous, cribriform, papillary, secretory, adenoid cystic, apocrine, micropapillary, metaplastic, neuroendocrine) are defined against it and several carry a better or worse prognosis than grade-matched no special type disease.
How common: the most common type of breast cancer (Cancer Research UK); Cancer Research UK gives no percentage and this page does not estimate one.
Treatment: entirely as the parent and its receptor pages describe (surgery, radiotherapy, endocrine therapy, chemotherapy, HER2-directed therapy and immunotherapy by receptor status and stage).
The most common type of breast cancer (Cancer Research UK); in the Cancer Genome Atlas breast series, 490 of 817 tumours were ductal (Ciriello 2015).
Most cancers start in the ducts and drain first to the axillary nodes, which is why the armpit is checked and a sentinel node is sampled.
Same organ: Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC), Breast cancer (all types), HR-positive / HER2-negative breast cancer, HER2-positive breast cancer, Male breast cancer, Ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS), High-risk early HR-positive breast cancer, HR-positive metastatic breast cancer after CDK4/6 inhibitors, HER2-low and HER2-ultralow metastatic breast cancer, Early HER2-positive breast cancer, HER2-positive breast cancer with brain metastases, Early triple-negative breast cancer, Metastatic triple-negative breast cancer, Basal-like 1 triple-negative breast cancer (BL1), Basal-like 2 triple-negative breast cancer (BL2), Mesenchymal triple-negative breast cancer (M), Mesenchymal stem-like triple-negative breast cancer (MSL), Luminal androgen receptor triple-negative breast cancer (LAR), Immunomodulatory triple-negative breast cancer (IM), Metaplastic breast carcinoma, Carcinoma with medullary pattern (medullary breast cancer), Adenoid cystic carcinoma of the breast, Apocrine carcinoma of the breast, Secretory carcinoma of the breast, BRCA-associated triple-negative breast cancer, Inflammatory breast cancer, Paget disease of the nipple, Phyllodes tumour of the breast, Invasive lobular carcinoma of the breast, Tubular carcinoma of the breast, Mucinous carcinoma of the breast, Papillary carcinomas of the breast (encapsulated, solid and invasive papillary), Invasive cribriform carcinoma of the breast, Invasive breast carcinoma with medullary pattern (medullary carcinoma), Invasive micropapillary carcinoma of the breast, Neuroendocrine neoplasms of the breast, Lobular carcinoma in situ (LCIS)
Treated as the parent's receptor pages describe.
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Query for this cancer: (TITLE:"Invasive breast carcinoma of no special type" OR ABSTRACT:"Invasive breast carcinoma of no special type" OR TITLE:"invasive ductal carcinoma" OR ABSTRACT:"invasive ductal carcinoma" OR TITLE:"Invasive ductal carcinoma" OR ABSTRACT:"Invasive ductal carcinoma" OR TITLE:"IDC" OR ABSTRACT:"IDC" OR TITLE:"Invasive carcinoma of no special type" OR ABSTRACT:"Invasive carcinoma of no special type" OR TITLE:"NST" OR ABSTRACT:"NST") AND (treatment OR therapy OR trial OR survival OR diagnosis). Results are unfiltered search hits about Invasive breast carcinoma of no special type (invasive ductal carcinoma), not a curated reading list.
No targets or pathways are linked to this cancer yet. Browse the gene hub →
Cases by country, the UK and NHS pathway and other country lenses, and the expert centres with trials on record.
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