What is the 'Gleason grade' in prostate cancer?

What is the 'Gleason grade' in prostate cancer?

Mark Vogel (Board Certified Urologist) gives expert video advice on: What is a 'prostate pathology report'?; What is prostate cancer 'staging'?; What are the different stages of prostate cancer? and more...

If prostate cancer has been detected, a Gleason score will be a sign. What this involves is assigning a number from one to five for the most common tissue pattern of the cancer and then the next most common and combining those numbers together. The highest number one can have is five plus five or ten and the lowest would be one plus one, or two. We use this number to signify how aggressive the cancer may be.