STAGES OF CANCER - Health Care

STAGES OF CANCER

The most rapidly growing disease in the world is undoubtedly Cancer. It is still considered as the most deadly disease due to the fact that cancer is the leading cause of death for more than 13 million people till 2017. The term often used in cancer is the stage of cancer. Basically staging is nothing just a way of explaining the size of the cancer and how far it has spread in the body. Whenever doctors first diagnose cancer in any patient they take different tests to check about the size of the cancer and how much it has spread in the other tissues of the body. It is a common practice to also check whether cancer is spread to other parts of the body or not.

Generally, cancer staging system indulges grading of cancer which helps to shows the similarity or dissimilarity between a cancer cell to a normal cell.

STAGES OF CANCER

IMPORTANCE OF STAGING:

Staging of a cancer is very necessary as it helps the doctors to know what kind of treatment should be done at the moment to a patient. Suppose if a cancer is only present in one area than a normal operation like surgery or radiotherapy could prove as the best diagnoses to get rid of this diseases, but this operation would be only beneficial for one part of the body.

If cancer has spread to other areas of the body too than this local treatment would not be enough at all. The patient would need a treatment which removes cancer from every part of the body, called systematic treatment. It includes biological therapies, hormone therapies, and Chemotherapy as well because they circulate in the whole bloodstream.

It is often seen when doctors are not sure about the position of cancer that whether it is spread in different areas of the body or just located at a single area of the body, they try to look at lymph nodes present near cancer. If cancer cells are found in these nodes than it is concluded that cancer has started to spread in the body. It is called the positive lymph nodes as the original cancer cell has spliced into small cells and hot trapped in these nodes but it is also not possible every time to suggest that these cells have spread all over the body or not.

When cancer cells are present near the lymph nodes, doctors usually prefer adjuvant treatment, in which another secondary treatment is carried out with primary treatment to get rid of the broken cancer cells.

STAGING SYSTEMS TYPES

Basically, there are two types of staging system

1-TNM system 

2-Number system

1-THE TNM SYSTEM:

Most doctors use TNS system to describe the stage of cancer. Each type of cancer has its own separate TNM system but the general explanation of TNM system can be described and listed as follows:

TUMOR (T):

The letter (T) and a number from (0-4) describe the location of the tumor and its size too along with the information about tumor�s growth in nearby tissues as well. To provide more detail, is some cancer�s alphabets �a�, �b� or �m� are used with T to provide further assistance.

Node (N):

The letter (N) and a number from (0-3) are used to tell whether a cancer has been found in lymph node and also the number lymph nodes which contains cancer. Basically, lymph nodes are very small and bean-shaped organs who always fights against different kinds of infections. Mostly the huge number of lymph nodes means the larger number to be assigned.

Metastatic (M):

The letter (M) is basically used to indicate whether cancer has metastasized, or grown in other areas or the body or not. If it is spread to other parts of the body too than it is considered as M0 otherwise it is labeled as M1.

2-THE NUMBER STAGING SYSTEM:

Majority of the doctors add the T, N, M results to tell about the stage of cancer for every patient. Generally, cancers have four stages: stage I (one) to stage IV (four) but some rare cancers also have a stage 0 as well.

STAGE 0:

This stage tells that cancer is in situ, means �in place�. Cancer in stage 0 means that cancer is still present in its place where it started and it�s not spread among other tissues. This stage is curable by removing the tumor with the help of surgery.

STAGE 1:

This stage is when the tumor is neither grown deeply in the nearby tissues nor has it spread to the lymph nodes and other areas of the body. It is termed as early-stage cancer.

STAGE 2:

This stage means that the tumor has not spread to lymph nodes but it is grown deep into nearby tissues due to its large size.

STAGE 3:

This stage indicates that the tumor has spread to the lymph nodes and also grown deeply in the nearby tissues as well but it is not spread in the other areas of the body. 

STAGE 4:

This stage means that cancer has spread to different organs of the body and it is grown in the nearby tissues too along with spreading to the lymph nodes. This stage is termed as the advanced stage or metastatic cancer.

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