Diagnosing cancer will take some steps to find out the cancer stage. Stages of cancer are used to help out doctors find a treatment plan and to help patients recognize the level of their cancer and the prognosis. Staging cancer seems bewildering, but truly, it is easy to understand.

Defining Staging

Cancer stages are determined through a process called staging. Staging determines the severity of the cancer. It is based on the extent of the cancer and how much it has spread in the body. Doctors will perform additional tests to check the body for cancer and to get a good idea of where the cancer is, where it began and if it is spreading.

Importance of Staging

Staging can help in lots of methods. It’s the essential part of the process to determine how to cure cancer. Also, it’s useful for future in researching and understanding of how the cancer in the body reacts. Following are the major reasons why staging is essential:

• Helps find out the treatment plan
• Helps in finding out a lung cancer prognosis
• Useful in research studies

The Factors of Staging

Staging is completed by examining various factors. To keep up a level of consistency for the staging, there are some factors that are included in determining the stages of cancer. These factors are:

•  Location of early cancer
• Size and number of tumors
• Type of cell and grade of the tumor
• Extent of metastasis

Staging Systems

Lung cancer stages are referred to based upon a staging system. The most commonly used staging system is the TNM system. TNM stands for:

T stands for Tumor
N stands for Lymph Nodes
M stands for Metastasis

Every letter receives a number added to it to signify the level of the cancer regarding the tumor, lymph nodes and metastasis. The range numbers is from 0 to 4, with 0 being representative of none and 4 being the highest stage of cancer.

Cancer stages are generally based on the five stages of a simple chart. Here’s how it looks:

Step 0: Only at the beginning or pre-cancerous cells are present

Stage 1, 2 and 3: Cancer is present and maybe has spread in the specified area

Step 4: The cancer has spread somewhere else in the body

Understanding cancer stages is not always easy, but it is important. A person receiving a diagnosis of cancer in stage 1 will know that their cancer is easier to treat and therefore their prognosis will likely be good.

Technorati Tags: , , , ,