Staging

• The process of determining the size and extent of cancer is called as staging.
• Determining and knowing the stage of pancreatic cancer is important for the doctor to decide upon the treatment course.
• Pancreatic cancer is staged on the basis of size of the tumor and whether the cancer has spread to other parts of the body. The stage is usually determined with the help of the tests that are used for diagnoses of pancreatic cancer.
• The cancer is staged on the basis of the size of the tumor (T), whether the tumor has spread to near by lymph nodes (N) and whether it has spread to other far of organs- metastasis (M).

View details of various stages of pancreatic cancer according to the UICC TNM classification 2002 ⁵