Cancer Staging

Cancer stage describes the anatomic extent of disease at diagnosis: the location and extent of the primary tumour, involvement of regional lymph nodes, and distant spread. It gives the team a common language for treatment planning, prognosis, communication, and cancer surveillance. Stage is not the same as tumour grade. Grade describes how abnormal the cells appear under the microscope, while stage describes where the cancer is and how far it has spread. Stage also does not replace a current nursing assessment; a person with an early-stage cancer can still become acutely unwell from illness or treatment. TNM is the main anatomic framework for many cancers. T describes the primary tumour's size or local extent, N describes regional lymph-node involvement, and M describes whether distant metastatic spread is present. Some cancers use a different disease-specific staging system, and the combinations that form a stage group differ by tumour site. Stage 0 generally identifies in-situ abnormal cells; Stages I, II, and III describe increasing local or regional extent; Stage IV indicates distant spread. These broad labels are orientation only, never a substitute...