When reporting on a breast carcinoma specimen, it is required that reporting be done giving information about several different aspects (1) . It is easy to be overwhelmed with the histopathology data. The mnemonic “STINGER.COM” is meant as an aide memoire regarding the key things to be reported on.
Size in mm of index invasive tumour
Type / Total size
Type i.e. Ductal, Lobular etc
Total size of tumour i.e. Invasive + DCIS
Invasion (Lymphovascular) i.e Absent/Present
Nodes (involvement) e.g 0/2, 2/5 etc
Grade i.e. 1,2 or 3
Extent i.e. Localised, Multifocal, Multicentric etc
Receptors
ER e.g 0/8,8/8 etc
PR e.g 0/8,8/8 etc
HER 2 status
FISH status
Carcinoma in situ
Absent/present
Size in mm
Type i.e. DCIS,LCIS etc
Other pathology
Absent/Present
Type i.e. Paget’s, Atypical Ductal Hyperplasia etc
Margins/Microinvasion
Margins i.e. distance of disease from closest relevant margin
Microinvasion Absent/Present
Reference:
(1) Ellis I, Al-Sam S, Anderson N, Carder P, Deb R, Girling A, et al. Pathology reporting of breast disease in surgical excision specimens incorporating the dataset for histological reporting of breast cancer June 2016. 2016.
