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Stage v. Grade: What's the Difference? |
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The medicalese lingo that comes flying at you after a diagnosis can be extremely confusing. These are two terms you should be very familiar with.
 stage describes if and how far the disease has spread from the original organ where the Cancer started to other parts of the body. Each cancer is staged differently, but generally gynecologic cancers are Staged I through IV(four). Some are staged clinically(exams,tests,xrays) but most require surgery for biopsies, and are thus surgically staged. An important thing to remember is that once a stage is assigned, Stage does NOT change.... ever. If a cancer recurs, it is known as "recurrent". Or, if it is still there at the end of treatment, and perhaps now has spread as well, it is known as "persistent" and/or "metastatic". These points are important when trying to determine the chances of beating the cancer and looking at treatment options.
grade describes the degree of abnormality of cancer cells when examined under a microscope. To some extent, a higher grade cancer is more likely to grow faster and spread early, but not always.
The grade often refers to how well "differentiated" the cancer cells are. This is another way to express how close to normal do the cancer cells appear to be, and is used interchangeably with GRADE. "Well differentiated"(Grade 1) is the closest to normal category and means they are still somewhat similar to normal cells in the organ that the cancer started growing in. "Moderately differentiated"(Grade 2) cells are more abnormal and "poorly differentiated"(Grade 3) cells have very bizarre appearance under the microscope. Another few terms used in pathology reports are "anaplastic" or "undifferentiated";both refer to cells that are so bizarre that it is hard to determine which organ these cells came from. Most often this is relevant when the cells are found at a distant site (like lymph nodes) and the organ where the cancer originated is still undetermined. These are sometimes referred to as Grade 4 cells in some grading systems. Gynecologic cancers are most often graded 1-3.
Search our Dictionary section for more terms you need to know about!
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Last Updated ( Sunday, 10 February 2008 )
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Cancer Information: The Basics 
