Stage
Staging is the process of determining how much cancer there is in the body and where it is located. The underlying purpose of staging is to describe the extent or severity of an individual's cancer, and to bring together cancers that have similar prognosis and treatment. Staging of breast cancer is one aspect of breast cancer classification that assists in making appropriate treatment choices, when considered along with other classification aspects such as estrogen receptor and progesterone receptor levels in the cancer tissue, the human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2/neu) status, menopausal status, and the person's general health.
Staging information that is obtained prior to surgery, for example by mammography, x-rays and CT scans, is called clinical staging and staging by surgery is known as pathological staging.
Pathologic staging is more accurate than clinical staging, but clinical staging is the first and sometimes the only staging type. For example, if clinical staging reveals stage IV disease, extensive surgery may not be not helpful, and (appropriately) incomplete pathological staging information will be obtained.
Read more about this topic: Breast Cancer Classification
Famous quotes containing the word stage:
“Morality is a venereal disease. Its primary stage is called virtue; its secondary stage, boredom; its tertiary stage, syphilis.”
—Karl Kraus (1874–1936)
“Saigon was an addicted city, and we were the drug: the corruption of children, the mutilation of young men, the prostitution of women, the humiliation of the old, the division of the family, the division of the country—it had all been done in our name.... The French city ... had represented the opium stage of the addiction. With the Americans had begun the heroin phase.”
—James Fenton (b. 1949)
“Life is a disease; and the only difference between one man and another is the stage of the disease at which he lives. You are always at the crisis: I am always in the convalescent stage.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)