Diagnostic size cutoffs

Size cutoffs are seen in a number of places in pathology. They are usually somewhat arbitrary by their nature; however, they often make sense from a biologic big picture/management perspective. It doesn't make sense to treat ADH and low-grade DCIS the same as their behaviour is different. In pathology, the size matters. With other things equal, in the context of how tumours are currently evaluated, big tumours do worse than small tumours.

Precursor	Cutoff for precursor	Cancer
Papillary adenoma of the kidney	<=0.5 cm	Papillary_renal_cell_carcinoma
Atypical adenomatous hyperplasia	<5 mm	Adenocarcinoma in situ of the lung

See also

• Basics.
• Cancer.