HER2 Support Group Forums - View Single Post - here we go again: How inexact ER status testing is!!!

Hopeful · 07-09-2007, 07:55 PM

Lani,

Thanks for posting this report. I was reading an article last year on the possibility for some ER+ women with small cancers not to be routinely rx with chemo, and one of the doctors interviewed said part of the reluctance to come out with such a guideline had to do with the inexactitude, for want of a better word, of ER testing - that it vaired more from lab to lab than Her2 testing, and that it was the big problem no one talked about.

I have also read that there is a difference in the intensity of the ER staining, which provides additional info to the sheer number of the cells that stain for positive. Do you have any info on that?

Thanks,

Hopeful

07-09-2007, 07:55 PM	#4
Hopeful Senior Member Join Date: Aug 2006 Posts: 3,380	Lani, Thanks for posting this report. I was reading an article last year on the possibility for some ER+ women with small cancers not to be routinely rx with chemo, and one of the doctors interviewed said part of the reluctance to come out with such a guideline had to do with the inexactitude, for want of a better word, of ER testing - that it vaired more from lab to lab than Her2 testing, and that it was the big problem no one talked about. I have also read that there is a difference in the intensity of the ER staining, which provides additional info to the sheer number of the cells that stain for positive. Do you have any info on that? Thanks, Hopeful