The Role Of Staging When Diagnosing Breast Cancer

A cancer diagnosis can be overwhelming, and people who receive such news may be flooded with a wide range of emotions. When delivering such a diagnosis, doctors share vital information about their patients’ disease. Those details can go a long way toward easing patients’ concerns.

Staging is an important component of cancer treatment. The National Cancer Institute notes that stage refers to the extent of the cancer, including how large the tumor is and whether or not it has spread, or metastasized. Learning the stage of the cancer, which is typically expressed on a scale of 0 through IV, helps...