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	Notes
Papillary adenoma of the kidney	<=0.5 cm	Papillary_renal_cell_carcinoma	-
Atypical alveolar hyperplasia	<5 mm	Adenocarcinoma in situ of the lung	-
Atypical ductal hyperplasia	<2mm	Low-grade ductal carcinoma in situ	Different criterion for lesions in an intraductal papilloma
Atypical ductal hyperplasia in an intraductal papilloma	<3mm	Low-grade ductal carcinoma in situ in an intraductal papilloma	-

See also

• Diagnosis.
• Cancer.