Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer-related mortality in the US. Over 215,000 cases are expected to be diagnosed in 2008, with over 161,000 deaths per year. Appropriate therapy is dependent on accurate staging to determine those amenable to surgery and define the appropriate role for chemotherapy and radiation therapy. For many years, the tumor, node, metastases (TNM) classification syst...

T he article by STRAND et al. [1] on the evaluation of the new tumour, node, metastasis (TNM) classification and staging system for lung cancer raises important questions on the validity of the classification and its therapeutic implications in clinical practice. The authors analysed a population-based series of 1,885 patients who underwent operation for lung cancer and who were registered at t...

BACKGROUND Prediction of postoperative survival for hilar cholangiocarcinoma (HCCA) remains difficult although there have been a variety of clinical classification and staging systems. This study was designed to validate and compare some of the major HCCA staging systems in use today. In addition, we sought to build up a new staging system modified from Jarnagin-Blumgart (J-B) classification fo...

BACKGROUND The aim of this study was to assess the validity of the 7th edition of the American Joint Committee on Cancer (AJCC) TNM system (TNM-7) for patients undergoing hepatectomy for hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). METHODS Partial hepatectomies performed for 879 patients from 1993 to 2005 were retrospectively reviewed. Clinicopathological factors, surgical outcome, overall survival (OS), ...

The tumour-node metastasis (TNM) classification system is anatomically based. We investigated whether the addition of simple physiological variables, age and body mass index (BMI), would affect survival curves, i.e. a composite anatomical and physiological staging system. We retrospectively analysed a prospectively validated thoracic surgery database (n = 1981). Cox multivariate analysis was pe...

We thank Baisi et al. [1] for their interest in, and comments on, our article [2]. First, all of the patients in this retrospective study underwent brain computed tomography (CT) or brain magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to evaluate brain metastasis, and most underwent F-18 fluorodeoxyglucose positron emission tomography (FDG-PET) for systemic screening to evaluate the N and the M parameters. F...

OBJECTIVE The 7th edition of AJCC staging manual implicitly states that only T1 and T2 lesions that lack regional lymph node metastasis but have tumor deposit(s) will be classified in addition as N1c, though it is not consistent in that pN1c is also an option for pT3/T4a tumors in the staging table. Nevertheless, in this TNM classification, how to classify tumor deposits (TDs) in colorectal can...

BACKGROUND The TNM staging system is far from perfect in predicting the survival of individual cancer patients because only the gross anatomy is considered. The survival rates of the patients who have the same TNM stage disease vary across a wide spectrum. This study aimed to develop a nomogram that incorporates other clinicopathologic factors for predicting the overall survival (OS) of non-met...

Introduction. Small bowel neuroendocrine tumours (NETs) are the most common type of gastrointestinal neuroendocrine tumours. The incidence and prevalence of these tumours are on the rise. The aims of this study were to determine prognostic clinicopathological features and whether the ENETS TNM staging system predicts prognosis and also. Method. Clinical data was collected retrospectively from 1...

Our study describes the new seventh edition of the TNM system for lung cancer in a national population and its clinical implications. We classified 1,885 operated patients with lung cancer, reported to the Cancer Registry of Norway (Oslo, Norway) from 2001 to 2005, according to the sixth and the seventh edition of the TNM system. We compared survival differences adjusting for known prognostic f...