What Is a Gleason Score?
The Gleason score is a grading system for prostate cancer that rates how aggressive the disease is, which helps doctors determine your prognosis and treatment. Named after pathologist Donald Gleason, who developed the grading system in the 1960s, the Gleason score is a crucial component in assessing prostate cancer.
When a person has prostate cancer, the prostate cells are mutating or changing, becoming abnormal. Early in the development of the disease, cancer cells may look like healthy cells. The closer the cancer cells look to healthy cells, the lower the grade. But they will slowly change over time and become more abnormal in appearance, corresponding to a higher grade.
Cells in one part of a tumor may look different from cells in other parts, meaning one part of a tumor may have a higher grade than another. The Gleason score provides an understanding of these variations by incorporating grades from two areas that make up most of the cancer.
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