What are the stages of cancer?

Question

I've always heard there are 4, but what do they mean? I've heard Stage 4 is the worst prognosis.

Answer 1

Staging for cancer is done for treatment purposes and not necessarily for prognosis. In general, depending on the type of cancer there are four stages. Cancer is a progressive disease which means it starts out as a microscopic cell that has lost the ability to stop growing. That one cancer cell will grow indefinitely and along the way replicate itself endlessly . . creating first a nodule, than a tumor, than several tumors, and than it will begin to 'seed' additional malignant cells into the blood stream. This progression of disease is classified according to stage. Stage 1 cancer is early, very small amount of nodules or tumor . . in one location. . treatment is usually simply to remove it. Stage 2 cancer is just a little larger, still in one location, treatment may be to remove it and give additional treatment just to prevent reoccurence. Stage 3 cancer indicates that the tumor has started to grow into surrounding tissue, there may be more than one, and they are getting larger. Treatment becomes more complicated by surgery, chemo, and radiation. Stage 4 indicates advanced disease . . the cancer has a primary location (one spot), the tumor has invaded surrounding tissue, there may be more than one, and the disease has metastasized by sending out hundreds of microscopic malignant cells into the blood stream. Those cells can set up all new cancer colonies anywhere in the body . . anywhere that blood travels . . and that is why the prognosis is 'worse' . . once the cancer metastasizes it becomes hard to find. It can be anywhere in the body . . usually microscopic or hard to locate. At that point only chemotherapy can be used to control the progression of disease. If chemo does not stop the cancer it will spread and grow throughout the whole body. That is why cancer is so feared.  However, advances have been made in recent years and more and more people are surviving stage IV cancers . . survival depends on many different factors including the type of cancer and location of the tumors. So . . even though someone may have a stage IV cancer, do not assume it is an automatic death sentence. People survive stage IV, but treatment is very , very difficult . . and there are no guarantees.

The best way to 'cure' cancer . . is to find it early.

Medical Illustration: Stages of Colon Cancer

http://www.meb.uni-bonn.de/cancer.gov/Me...

Answer 2

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