Can a doctor tell the staging of a cancer prior to the tissue coming back from the lab ?

Question

Can a doctor tell the staging of a cancer prior to the tissue coming back from the lab ?

Answer 1

no, but he/she can make an educated guess.

Answer 2

They may have a pretty good idea but most doctors are hesitant to say anything without the results coming back.

My Mom had a mole removed that looked cancerous.  Results came back negative.  The doctor told her, after he gave her the results, that he was nearly sure it was cancer, but it wasn't.  So you never really know for sure, until you get the results back from the lab.

Answer 3

They may have seen it before and have some idea. My friends GP diagnosed cancer of the v***a as soon as he examined her, although he didnt tell her at the time, but made notes in her record book, her tests proved positive.The doctor was spot-on with the stage of diagnosis bcos he had seen it before

Answer 4

Is this tissue from the first biopsy to see if it is malignant or benign? If thats the case, they probably will need to do additional testing in order to stage it.

I think staging has alot to do with if the cancer is contained in one area or if it has spread, and also the size of the tumors. Most of the time, I think they do an MRI or CT scan in order to find that out. There are some cancers which are not staged. My stepfather was just diagnosed with liver cancer a few weeks ago, and the doctor told us he did not stage hepatocellular cancer (liver cancer). I would assume because its such an aggressive type of cancer which is already in a main organ?  

Answer 5

They tell you what they think it is, based on where it is, how big it is, and how far it has spread from the original starting point.  Then when the tissue comes back they make their final analysis based on all of those AND the pathology report.

Answer 6

Some cancers, maybe. Some, they can only make a "clinical staging" which may be based on physical examination and other tests (such as PET/CT scans, bone scans, etc.).

For some cancers the staging is dependent on the number of lymph nodes involved. Until the nodes are removed and examined by the pathologist, they don't know how many are affected. In other cases, where neoadjuvant chemotherapy is performed, the actual staging is never known, as cancer in the nodes may be destroyed by chemo.