What is staging of a cancer?
It is a classification that segregates the periodic effects of the cancer on a human body. With the help of this system, the medical team can determine the rate of progression of the cancer cell and accordingly its treatment to stop it from further growth.
With the effective treatment in place, the team of medical experts can further decide on better treatments, other possible medications and chances of recovery of the cancer patients.
Through a brief summary the meaning of staging will be further elaborated to you.
- Stage 1 generally signifies the origination of the cancerous cell inside a specific organ and it being relatively small and uncharacteristic.
- In stage 2, the cancerous cell has not yet started to proceed further inside the organ and nearby tissues but the tumor is larger compared to the 1st stage.
- Stage 3 of cancer suggests the scenario to be serious as the cancerous cell is now aggressively moving through the vessels and have reached the lymph nodes of that affected area.
- Stage 4 or the secondary cancer suggests that the germ of cancer has now passed to a new organ from where it started.
Types of staging
The doctors basically use a five stage ranking system to determine the position of the cancer and accordingly they measure their steps required to be taken.
The staging starts from 0, I, II, III, IV where 0 denotes the initial stage of the cancer where the cell has just taken birth and IV is the ultimate stage where the cancerous cell is at its full flurry, already developed into tumors and wandering through each and every organs, damaging them from functioning.
There is another way of treating cancer patients through TNM staging system where T stands for size of the Tumor, N stands for participation of the lymph Node and M stands for metastasis, suggests the extent to which the germ has spread across inside. This is a specialized three dimensional ranking of cancer comprehensiveness. It is ranked according to the development of the cancerous cell of the specific part in each dimension in the cancer patients. For example, if the tumor has become larger but has not spread at all, the ratings will be T3, N0, and M0. Again if the growth of the tumor has been constant but it has spread inside the organ and even in the lymph nodes, the ratings will be T3, N2, M1.
Summary staging is another prolific method of ranking the position of cancer which is presently used by the National Cancer Institute for its SEER program. This system includes stage 0, which denotes the early period of cancer when it is still in its buds - the localized stage where the cancer has not started diffusing yet.
Next is the Regional stage where the cancerous cells have reached to the local nymph nodes but not yet to another organ. Then we have the distant stage where the cancerous growth is progressing through other organs and vessels, and finally the Unknown stage where the cancer has not other appropriate matching and is the last stage from where the patients usually do not survive.
