We appreciate the opportunity to respond to Dr. Bach's letter and have addressed the questions he posed in the order presented.Bach questioned whether survival data were used by Mountain as a basis for developing the staging system for lung cancer. Mountain states, in the paper referenced in our article, that, "Stage grouping involves the concept of combining subsets of patients classified according to TNM descriptors into categories or stages, each having generally similar treatment options and survival expectations." In another paper , he states "survival data support the revised categories and confirm the significant relationship between the extent of the disease and prognosis for patients with this disease."
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