Thursday, September 5, 2013

Tumor

The staging of the tumor as I understand it:

Cancer and carcinoma are originally medical terms for tumor and are still use that way in reports for other medical professionals, such as this. You really have to look for the terms benign and malignant.


AJCC Pathological Staging:

First they determine the size. pT3 is not the biggest but is still big enough to keep their attention, especially in someone who has had cancer before.

Then they determine if the lymph nodes were involved. pN0 means there were no malignant cells found in the lymph nodes.

Next they determine if there were any other tumors or "runners" involved. pMx means they did not determine whether or not there are any other tumors. There were obviously no "arms" reaching out from tumor.

Given these three factors they gave her a stage IIA on size alone.


Additional findings: "additional portion of omental tissue, microscopic examination of which shows no evidence of malignancy; appendix is free of tumor". All tests mentioned showed no malignancy.


In short, it was a big benign tumor. It probably would have continued to grow - just my opinion.