Prostate Cancer Staging
What is staging?
Staging is a process to detect the spread of cancer and to find the place where the cancer is located. This helps the doctors to understand the development of the tumor and to plan for their specific treatment.
Staging is necessary to determine the treatment for the effective results. For example, radiation therapy may work if a cancer is diagnosed at its early stage, or chemotherapy is necessary if the cancer is in advanced age. Staging also helps to predict the duration of treatment and the recovery period.
Staging Prostate Cancer
When the prostate cancer is diagnosed, some test are performed to detect the spread of the cancer has expanded over other parts of body than the glands. Prostate cancer staging may be complicated and difficult.
Prostate cancer usually develops within the prostate for many years, but some times it expands out of the prostate. There are three ways in which prostate cancer can spread to the nearby organs of prostate. These three ways are-
- When the tumor or prostate cancer cells invade the nearby tissues
- When cancer cells spread through the lymph nodes and vessels
- when the prostate cancer cells spread throughout the blood stream
Identifying Tests for Prostate cancer Stage
After diagnosing the prostate cancer, some tests are performed to detect the spread of cancer. These tests are necessary when the cancer has gone out of prostate. It is not necessary for everyone because it depends upon the patient's prostate cancer symptoms based on biopsy. These test include-
- Prostate specific antigen
- MRI test
- Transrectal ultrasound
- CT scan of pelvis and abdomen for detecting the prostate cancer metastasis
- Skeleton MRI
- Surgery to find the spread of prostate cancer into lymph nodes
Two Systems of Staging Prostate Cancer
The two systems used for staging the prostate cancer are- American urologic staging system and the TNM system. American urologic staging system contains five stages (A-D2).
- Stage A describes the prostate cancer at early stage, which cannot be detected by imaging techniques or felt by the sufferer. The tumor's size is so small so that it can not be identified through the microscope.
- Stage B considers when the cancer is palpated by the patient, but it is still located only within prostate.
- Stage C signals the spread of cancer out of prostate and on other tissues.
- Stage D when the cancer has spread in the lymph nodes.
- Stage D2 for the metastasis.
TNM System (Tumor Nodes and Metastasis)
Here, stages T1 and T2 are considered as equal to the stages A and B in the American urologic staging system. Stage T3 signifies the spread of cancer beyond the prostate and T4 shows that the prostate cancer has invaded the nearby tissues of prostate.
