How is stomach cancer staged?
Staging is the process of finding out how far a cancer has spread. The extent of spread of stomach cancer is an important factor in choosing treatment options and predicting a patient’s outlook (prognosis). The tests described in the section “How is stomach cancer diagnosed?” are the ones used to determine the stage of the cancer. The stage of a cancer does not change over time, even if the cancer progresses. A cancer that comes back or spreads is still referred to by the stage it was given when it was first found and diagnosed, only information about the current extent of the cancer is added. A person keeps the same diagnosis stage, but more information is added to the diagnosis to explain the current disease status The stage of a stomach cancer can be based either on the results of physical exams, biopsies, and imaging tests (called the clinical stage), or on the results of these tests plus the results of surgery (called the pathologic stage). The staging described here is the pathol
