Staging

I was originally diagnosed with IBC in Aug 2008, with breast, axillary and supraclavicular node(above the collarbone) involvement making me a stage 3, my frist recurrence 5 months after initial treatment was in my internal mammary lymph node - a loco-regional recurrence still a stage 3. this year it has gone to my liver as Dr Ueno states above this is considered a distant metastasis there for stage 4. So I would be the exception to the in general rule as my first recurrence was still within stage 3 parameters Yes, in general. When inflammatory breast cancer comes back it usually comes to a location outside of the original area (distant metastasis). All metastasis is consider Stage IV. Whether inflammatory breast cancer metastatic disease behaves differently from non-inflammatory breast cancer behaves differently is controversial. But, there is an intensive research going on to understand the biology of IBC metastasis.