What are the stages of cancer and what does it mean?
The stage of a cancer describes the size of a tumour and how far it has spread from where it originated. The grade describes the appearance of the cancerous cell. Further stages involve determining tumor size and how far cancer may have spread. The specifics of stages can be termed for different types of cancer.
There are different types of cancer stages which are used for different types of cancer. Below is an example of one common method of staging:
- Stage 0 – indicates that the cancer is where it started (in situ) and hasn't spread
- Stage I – the cancer is small and hasn't spread anywhere else
- Stage II – the cancer grow , but hasn't spread
- Stage III – the cancer becomes larger and may have spread to the surrounding tissues or the lymph nodes.
- Stage IV – the cancer spread from where it started to at least one other body organ like to the liver or lung. This can be also called metastatic or secondary cancer.
Sometimes it can be used as letters A, B or C to further divide the number categories. For example, stage 3B cervical cancer.