Summary Staging Guide: Cancer Surveillance Epidemiology and End Results Reporting. SEER Program, April 1977

摘要

For ease in coding, the SEER Program favors the expanded extent of disease schemes. They act as a guide to complete reporting, and they indicate the usual progression of disease patterns. Often, however, comparisons are necessary with historical or other series for which only general staging categories are available. Therefore, this staging guide was developed which summarizes the expanded extent of disease categories into three general staging groups (i.e., localized, regional, and distant). Sometimes a series is so small that only general categories produce enough cases for a meaningful analysis. Many conditions may be grouped together which may seem incongruous, but such groupings are unavoidable if the extent of disease codes are to be summarized into three or four staging categories.