New lung cancer staging system revealed( For the first time in more than 10 y...),Health

For the first time in more than 10 years, the universally accepted lung cancer staging system has been revised to more accurately reflect the prognosis for patients with non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC).

A new report in the July issue of CHEST, the peer-reviewed journal of the American College of Chest Physicians (ACCP), reviews the development and final recommendations of the International Staging Committee of the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer (IASLC) for the staging of NSCLC. The new staging system for lung cancer is an unprecedented effort, based on the largest database of any cancer type and the most extensive statistical analysis that included rigorous internal and external validation. The revised staging system provides a detailed common nomenclature and more clearly defines the prognosis for patients with NSCLC through the addition of many new patient subgroups and reclassification of some previous subgroups.

"The development of the NSCLC database represents a tremendous amount of work. The size of the database and the extent of statistical analysis has not been duplicated for any other cancer type," said Frank Detterbeck, MD, FCCP, Chief of Thoracic Surgery at Yale University, Associate Director of the Yale Cancer Center, New Haven, CT, and author of the new report. "The new staging classification system also underscores the level of detail and complexity that characterizes the management of patients with lung cancer in the current era. The explosion of knowledge and the complexity of the disease make it harder to practice anything less than a sophisticated approach to lung cancer management."

The new IASLC staging system is based on the original TNM staging system adopted by the American Joint Committee on Cancer (AJCC) in 1973 and by the Union Internationale Contre le Cancer (UICC) in 1974, the official bodies that define, review, and refine the staging classification system. The original
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