Testicular cancer: stages

[ --- Nota bene: Unless stated otherwise all information listed on this page was written and provided by a TC patient and not by a doctor. Although it was collected with great attention it cannot and shall in no way replace your visit to your local doctor! --- ]

It has helped to assign a stage to the cancer of a patient. In the context of cancer, stages define how far the cancer has spread from the primary tumor into different areas of the body.

There are different staging classifications. The most commonly used one is the TNM Staging System of the American Joint Committee on Cancer (AJCC) and the International Union Against Cancer (UICC).

This system uses multiple factors like primary tumor (pT), regional lymph nodes (N), distant metastasis (M) and serum tumor markers (S) to assign a stage from 0, IA, IIB,... IIIC.

Basically the clustering is like the following:

• "Stage I
  Cancer is found only in the testicle.
  
  
• Stage II
  Cancer has spread to the lymph nodes in the abdomen (lymph nodes are small, bean-shaped structures that are found throughout the body; they produce and store infection-fighting cells).
  
  
• Stage III
  Cancer has spread beyond the lymph nodes in the abdomen. There may be cancer in parts of the body far away from the testicles, such as the lungs and liver."
  (© CancerNET UK)

Medical doctors agreed upon treatment plans based on the staging of the testicular cancer. Unfortunately there is not a common international agreement, but there are various flavours of treatment plans in different countries worldwide.

[next: treatment]