Read press release Lung cancer stages
This page tells you about the staging of lung cancer. There is information about
The stage of a cancer tells you how big it is and how far it has spread. It is important because it helps your doctor decide which treatment you need. The tests and scans you have to diagnose your cancer give some information about the stage. Sometimes it is not possible to be certain about the stage of a cancer until after surgery.
There are different ways of staging lung cancer – they are the number staging system and the TNM system.
The number system divides the stages into 4 main groups
Stage 1 – the cancer is small and only in one area of the lung (localised)
Stage 2 and 3 – the cancer is larger and may have grown into the surrounding tissues and there may be cancer cells in the lymph nodes (locally advanced)
Stage 4 – the cancer has spread to another part of the body (secondary or metastatic cancer)
Doctors break down each of these stages of lung cancer into sub groups, such as stage 3a, 3b and so on. There is more detail about each stage of lung cancer and its sub groups on the next page in this section.
TNM staging takes the following factors into account
- The size and position of the tumour (T)
- Whether cancer cells have spread into the lymph nodes (N)
- Whether the tumour has spread anywhere else in the body – secondary cancer or metastases (M)
The doctor gives each factor a number. So, a very small cancer which hasn’t spread is T1 N0 M0. A cancer that is larger and has spread into the lymph nodes and to another part of the body is T3, N1, M1.
You can find more about lung cancer staging on the next page in this section, which has a detailed explanation of the TNM lung cancer staging system.
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