STEP 1 | Learn About the IBC Scoring System
Overview
IBC has historically lacked a detailed, formal and objective definition for diagnosis, compromising clinical care and hindering research for IBC-specific biomarkers and treatments.
To improve diagnosis of IBC, a collaboration was formed between Susan G. Komen, the Inflammatory Breast Cancer Research Foundation (IBCRF) and the Milburn Foundation, which brought together a panel of IBC experts including researchers, clinicians and patient advocates. The panel identified defining clinical, pathologic and imaging characteristics of IBC. These elements were used to develop the IBC Scoring System, a common set of diagnostic criteria for the identification of IBC.
The IBC Scoring System was designed to be used by health care providers. If you are a patient, work with your health care provider to use this tool and interpret the results.
Please refer to the following publications for more information about how the IBC Scoring System was derived and validated:
- Jagsi, R et al. “Inflammatory breast cancer defined: proposed common diagnostic criteria to guide treatment and research.” Breast Cancer Research and Treatment vol. 192,2 (2022): 235-243.
- Lynce, Filipa et al. “Development of a Multi-Institutional Dataset to Validate a Novel Inflammatory Breast Cancer Diagnostic Score.” Journal of the National Cancer Institute, vol. 117,8 (2025): 1583-1592.
Important Instructions
A diagnosis of IBC ultimately depends on biopsy confirmation of breast cancer and cannot be made based on the IBC Scoring System results, which is intended to be a tool for health care providers to help differentiate IBC from other forms of breast cancer.
To use the scoring system, you will need to enter information regarding the timing and onset of symptoms, clinical presentation, breast imaging and pathology. The IBC Scoring System can be applied at any point in the disease presentation, e.g., before or after a trial of antibiotics, and without regard to the timing of a breast biopsy. Because of the variable nature of IBC, clinical presentation of the breast may change over time. This may impact the IBC Classification Score; therefore, the selections made within the calculator should be based on the most severe characteristics observed, regardless of their persistence.
Please answer questions to the best of your ability. These subjectivities are currently being refined in an ongoing study. There may be some subjectivity in making selections using the tool. By providing feedback via the user survey, you can help improve the usability of this tool.