RT Book, Section A1 Richards, William G. A1 Gill, Ritu R. A2 Sugarbaker, David J. A2 Bueno, Raphael A2 Burt, Bryan M. A2 Groth, Shawn S. A2 Loor, Gabriel A2 Wolf, Andrea S. A2 Williams, Marcia A2 Adams, Ann SR Print(0) ID 1170413990 T1 Mesothelioma Staging T2 Sugarbaker’s Adult Chest Surgery, 3e YR 2020 FD 2020 PB McGraw-Hill Education PP New York, NY SN 9781260026931 LK accesssurgery.mhmedical.com/content.aspx?aid=1170413990 RD 2023/05/30 AB Cancer staging systems are intended to assist clinicians to categorize patients diagnosed with a particular malignancy in terms of their life expectancy and potential response to specific therapeutic strategies. Generally speaking, patients categorized as early stage have anatomically localized malignancy associated with a longer life expectancy and better response particularly to local therapies directed at the primary tumor mass. Late-stage patients are presumed to have metastatic disease indirectly disseminated to distant anatomic sites, associated with shorter life expectancy and requiring systemic therapeutic approaches. A staging system is a set of criteria that defines such categories for a specific malignancy. Stage categories are defined in anatomic terms: How large is the tumor and what anatomic structures have become involved with (i.e., contain invasive proliferations of) tumor cells?