Diagnostic size cutoffs

Diagnostic size cutoffs are cutoffs which (in part) define a diagnosis and 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, 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 alveolar hyperplasia	<5 mm	Adenocarcinoma in situ of the lung

See also

• Diagnosis.
• Cancer.