What are the Stages of Cancer?

After diagnosing cancer the doctor tries to establish the stage of cancer. You may wonder why doctors try to do that. Staging of cancer is important as the treatment and prognosis (likely outcome scenario of what will happen) depends on the stage of cancer. Staging of cancer is done for all types of cancer after diagnosis. Read to more about the stages of cancer.

Stages 0, I, II, III, and IV: Several different types of staging scales are used but one of the most common in use is one which ranks cancers into five progressively more severe stages: 0, I, II, III, and IV.

• Stage 0 cancer: Cancer in this stage is just beginning and has just a few cells.
• Stages I, II, III, and IV: Each stage represents progressively larger cancer with more extensive spread and poorer prognosis.

TNM Staging System

This is another popular staging system which shows the three dimensional rating of cancer extensiveness. In the TNM system, the size and extent of cancer is defined on three scales. T indicates tumour size, N indicates lymph node involvement, and M indicates metastasis (the extent of tumour spread beyond its original locations). Score on the three scales indicate the size and aggressiveness of the tumour. If the score is larger on each of the three scales, it indicates a more advanced and aggressive cancer. Such as T3, N0, M0 indicates a large tumour that has not spread to other body parts whereas T2, N2, M1 stage indicates a small and aggressive tumour which has spread beyond its site of origin.

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