Different Stages of Cancer

When a patient is diagnosed with cancer, the cancer is rated depending on how far and how severe the cancer has progressed. These ratings are called stages. Each cancer is a little different on what symptoms must be present to be given a higher rating, but all cancers rate between a stage I and a stage IV. The stage rating allows the doctors treating the patient, as well as the patient, to know how much the cancer has grown or spread.

Importance of Staging

• Staging is an important part of cancer diagnosis because it allows the doctor to set out a plan of treatment. The stage of cancer helps the doctor know whether to provide localized treatment or systemic treatment for cancer that has spread to other areas of the body. If the cancer is localized, the doctor can use a treatment such as radiation that can be localized to one area. If the cancer has spread, a systemic treatment such as hormone therapy or chemotherapy will be used since it is introduced into the blood stream and spread throughout the entire body.

Stage I

• Stage I is a classification for cancers that have barely begun to form. A stage I tumor is usually quite small and has not left the organ from which it originated in. Stage I treatment is usually localized. This will mean either removing the tumor from the organ, or radiating the area to kill the tumor tissue.

Stage II

• In stage II cancer, the cancer cells are still contained but they have grown. Stage II cancer still uses a localized treatment method, but is substantially more complicated to remove from the organ because of its size. In some cases, stage II cancer may also involve cancer cells that have spread out into the lymph tissues around the tumor.

Stage III

• Stage III cancer is the first stage in which more systemic treatment is considered, such as chemotherapy. This is because the cancer cells have begun to infect the surrounding tissue of the organ, but have not yet started to transplant themselves in other organs of the body. By this point the cancer has also found its way inside the lymph nodes surrounding the original cancer site.

Stage IV

• Stage IV is reserved for the most severe cases of cancer. This stage is also called metastatic cancer because it has spread from the originating organ into the other organs of the body. The cancer cell growth has also sped up, causing larger tumors in less time. The tumor cells may also be crowding organs, causing organ failure and other related health problems at this point. There are few localized treatment options available because of the spread of the cancer, but there is still some amount of hope for chemotherapy treatments that treat the entire body.