What is meant by staging or grading?
From ACCO site – Adenoid Cystic Carcinoma Organization FAQs:
http://www.orgsites.com/ca/acco/_pgg1.php3
As of 5/15/02
What is meant by staging or grading?
Fundamentally, staging is a means to identify
how serious a particular cancer tumor by giving it some numerical classifications
as compared to other similar tumors. This is another area that has some
variations when looking at various medical papers and reports. The most
common staging system for ACC is the AJCC (American Joint Committee on
Cancer) Staging for Salivary Gland Cancer that was first proposed in 1975.
In this staging system three elements are taken into consideration: Size
of tumor with or without extension, lymph node involvement and distant
metastasis at time of presentation of the original tumor. Size is graded
on a beginning scale of T1 for a tumor 2cm or less in greatest dimension,
up to a T4 which is a tumor more than 6cm in greatest dimension. An (a)
after the T number indicates no local extension, a (b) indicates local
extension. Lymph nodes are rated on a scale of N0 through N3 for involvement
in lymph nodes and how nodes are involved. Finally, M0 means there are
no known metastases and M1 means there are metastases. An example of a
typical ACC staging could look like T4a, N0, M1. Based upon the combinations
of these three elements, a tumor is then classified as being Stage 1,
2, 3 or 4, with stage 4 being the most serious. Many ACC patients are
classified as stage 4 but can live another 15 to 20 years.
An additional staging/grading system that is utilized in some medical
papers is based upon tumor histology alone as seen from the standpoint
of the pathologist. An example of this would be grade 1: cribiform and
tubular histomorphology only, grade 2: mixture of cribiform, tubular and
solid growth pattern with less than 30% being solid and finally grade
3: greater than 30% and predominantly solid tumor histologic type.
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