Lung Cancer Staging

Lung cancer staging is important to determine lung cancer treatment and prognosis, it is also the assessment of the degree to which a lung cancer has spread from its original source. The more advanced stages of lung cancer indicate a poorer prognosis and are less amenable to treatment.


There are several methods, or modalities to determine this assessment. They are broadly classified into non-invasive techniques, which generally involve medical imaging of the lungs such as computer tomography (CT) scans, and invasive techniques such as biopsy. Invasive techniques provide additional information because it took tissue samples, so it can be seen microscopically to determine the type of lung cancer and its grade.

The right lung cancer staging is extremely important for the treatment planning process. Lung cancer treatment options are highly complex even for physicians with much experience in the field and they largely depend on the lung cancer stage.

There is a different between lung cancer staging and diagnosis:

• Lung Cancer Diagnosis
  Its objective is find out whether an abnormality seen on a chest x-ray or CT scan is indeed lung cancer, and what histological type it is (small cell lung cancer or non-small cell lung cancer).
  
• Lung Cancer Staging
  Its objective is to find out whether a structure, most often a lymph node in the mediastinum, has already been invaded by cancer or not. It is often possible, with proper planning, to obtain both lung cancer diagnostic and staging information with a single biopsy procedure.

Main article - Lung Cancer Stages