Term: Cancer Stage
Last Updated: 2016-01-21
Cancer stage indicates the severity of an individual's cancer at the time of diagnosis. Staging follows the guidelines of the American Joint Committee on Cancer (AJCC) and an AJCC summary cancer stage value, ranging from stage I (least severe) to stage IV (most severe) is available in the Manitoba Cancer Registry data. The summary cancer stage takes into account tumour stage (size of primary tumour and extent of tumour(s)), node stage (whether cancer has spread to adjacent lymph nodes), and metastasis (whether the cancer has spread from the primary site to other parts of the body). This is often referred to as the TNM cancer staging classification system.