1. Locally Advanced
Your doctor might tell you that your breast cancer stage reveals the extent of the disease and he needs to know that to plan your treatment for breast cancer. Advanced breast cancer indicates that it is already spread. In stage IIIA breast cancer, you are looking at a tumor no more than 5 cm across. It has spread to underarm lymph nodes and lymph nodes behind the breastbone. In stage IIIB, your cancer may be of any size that has grown into the chest wall or the skin of the breast. You can notice breast swelling or lumps in the breast skin. You can see similar spread as in stage IIIA. By the stage III, breast cancer may be of any size. It would have spread to the lymph nodes behind the breastbone and under the arm as well as lymph nodes above or below the collarbone.
2. Inflammatory Breast Cancer
It is one of those advanced breast cancers but rare. You are looking at red, warm and swollen breast as the cancer cells block the lymph vessels in the skin of the breast. The skin of the breast may have the pitted appearance called peau d'orange (like the skin of an orange). Your doctor might tell you that it is in stage III or beyond as he comes up with the diagnosis.
3. Spreading Far and Wide
The most advanced is the stage IV distant metastatic breast cancer. By then, your breast cancer would have spread to other parts of the body. The breast cancer would have gone beyond the breast, underarm and internal mammary lymph nodes to the lymph nodes present at the base of the neck, above the collar bone, into lungs, liver, bone or brain. If your diagnosis is termed "metastatic at presentation" it indicates that by the time your doctor had a chance to look at your disease it had already spread beyond the breast and nearby lymph nodes. In other words, it was stage IV by the time it was first diagnosed.
4. Recurrent Breast Cancer
In fact, even when the doctor might have apparently succeeded in treating the cancer, cancer would have come back, usually after a period of time during which the cancer could not be detected. The cancer may come back to the same place as the original tumor or to another place in the body. It is also called recurrent breast cancer.
5. Surviving Advanced Breast Cancer
According to the American Cancer Society, the average numbers of patients who are still alive five years after diagnosis with advanced breast cancer range from 67 percent in stage IIIA to 54 percent in IIIB and 20 percent in stage IV. But you should remember that researchers are constantly developing new treatment alternatives to prolong survival. For instance, drugs called aromatase inhibitors have showed remarkable promise in extending disease-free survival in postmenopausal women with metastatic breast cancer.
