I don’t know if there are any on the group but I’m looking for someone who works in histopathology to hopefully help me find out what a particular type of testing done on a mass would be and what the significance of it would be.
Last year I was diagnosed with a 4x2x2cm mass in my chest while having tests before starting new medication for RA. The radiologists picked up a shadow on the X-ray that hadn’t been on one done 4 months earlier when I was ill and in A&E so I ended up being referred to respiratory medicine under the 2WW lung pathway. Various tests later and they decided, because of its location and the risk of not getting sufficient sample if they did a needle biopsy, to remove the entire mass using VATS (video assisted thorascopic surgery) which I had done by cardiothoracic just 7 weeks after having the chest X-ray.
As part of the diagnostic process, the mass was sent off to a lab elsewhere in the country for specific genetic testing to see if it was a soft tissue sarcoma or an atypical lipoma in an unusual place. The testing that was done was MDM2 amplification by FISH; however, the results came back with the comment “Typical lipoma but MDM2 and SE12 displaying uncertain significance”. Obviously it’s good news that, to all intents and purposes, it’s ‘just’ a lipoma and not an STS but that one sentence troubles me.
I had a post op CT in January and spoke with the surgeon today about it and, again, asked him about the significance of that comment (he took it from the histopathology report) but he said he is having difficulty finding out the meaning of the SE12 component and why it’s not clear cut negative for MDM2.
He has also told me that the CT report from January states there is “partial recurrence” at the site so I am to have another CT scan in the coming weeks to make sure whatever it is isn’t growing again and that I won’t need further intervention (though, there’s no guarantee that they will operate if it’s nothing to worry about as there are risks associated with the surgery and having to collapse my lung to operate)
What I’m trying to find out is what the SE12 is in relation to the FISH testing and what the significance, if anything, is of the comments in the histopathology report.
TIA for any help offered.