Question

Describe what is staging and explain why it is critical to determine treatment and prognosis. Select a type of leukemia to explain and illustrate your answer

Answer 1

• In regards with cancer (such as leukemia), Staging  is the process of determining how much cancer is within the body (tumor size) and if it has spread.

This is often called the extent of cancer. The stage often includes the size of the tumour, which parts of the organ have cancer, whether the cancer has spread (metastasized) and where it has spread.

• Staging helps the doctor to find out how much cancer is in a person's body and where it's located. It's how the doctor determines the stage of a person's cancer. For most types of cancer(such as leukemia), doctors use staging information to help plan treatment and to predict a prognosis of the patient.

For example, each leukemia subtype is staged using a unique system:

• Acute lymphocytic leukemia – Staged based on the type of lymphocyte and the maturity of the cells.
• Acute myeloid leukemia – Staged based on the number of healthy blood cells, the size and number of the leukemia cells, the changes in the chromosomes of the leukemia cells and other genetic abnormalities.
• Chronic lymphocytic leukemia – Staged based on the number of lymphocytes in the blood, the degree of lymph node, spleen or liver enlargement and the presence of anemia or thrombocytopenia.
• Chronic myeloid leukemia – Staged based on the number of diseased cells found in blood and bone marrow tests.

The treatment and the prognosis is then based on the staging.