What Are The Stages Of Cancer?

Clinical Stage

When an individual is initially diagnosed with cancer, they will receive a stage classification before the start of any cancer treatment. This is referred to as the clinical stage. Cancer in the body will always be referred to using the stage it was assigned when the patient was first diagnosed with the disease, regardless of its progression pattern or metastasis. As more information is gathered about a patient's cancer over time, new alphanumeric characters or medical terms are added onto the initial stage designation they received. The reason for this consistency among cancer staging is to keep the statistical numbers, information, and treatment outcomes for specific cancer types consistent. Using the clinical stage assigned to the patient's cancer can help medical health care providers research and exchange a patient's information and gives them a universal terminology for a consistent understanding, evaluation, and analysis of clinical trial results.

Learn about another type of stage of cancer now.

Pathologic Stage

When an individual is diagnosed with cancer, they will undergo imaging testing and physical examinations to help their physician determine the clinical stage of their cancer. After these tests are done, the patient works with their health care provider to set up a treatment plan. Most solid tumor cancer types are treated with a surgical procedure to remove as much of the cancerous tissue as possible. At the time of the surgical procedure, tissues are taken from the patient's tumor and sent to a laboratory for further examination. The stage assigned based on the information about how the cancerous cells appear underneath a microscope at this point is referred to as the pathologic stage. Some patients do not immediately undergo a surgical procedure to remove the malignant growth, but will still be assigned a pathologic stage based on a non-surgical biopsy performed on their tumor.