BACKGROUND Baseline staging is important in all melanoma types, including melanoma with unknown primary site (MUP). Staging includes different examination strategies, each with different accuracy. OBJECTIVE To determine the value of serum S100 protein levels and positron emission tomography (PET) in the baseline staging of MUP. METHODS Twenty patients with MUP were evaluable for the analysi...

The tumor-node-metastasis (TNM) staging system has been the anchor of cancer diagnosis, treatment, and prognosis for many years. For meaningful clinical use, an orderly, progressive condensation of the T and N categories into an overall staging system needs to be defined, usually with respect to a time-to-event outcome. This can be considered as a cutpoint selection problem for a censored respo...

PURPOSE Down-staging of clinical T3 (cT3) prostate cancer after radical prostatectomy (RP) is not uncommon due to the inaccuracy of the currently available staging modalities, although selected down-staged cT3 patients can be a candidate for definitive RP. We identified the significant predictors for down-staging of cT3 after RP. MATERIALS AND METHODS We included 67 patients with cT3 stage pr...

The International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer (IASLC) has conducted an extensive initiative to inform the revision of the lung cancer staging system. This involved development of an international database along with extensive analysis of a large population of patients and their prognoses. This article reviews the recommendations of the IASLC International Staging Committee for the ...

Staging systems are widely used in cancer treatment for classifying patients into groups that have different risks of disease progression and death. This information is the basis for planning appropriate treatment strategies. The staging system most often used in patients with renal cell cancer (RCC) is the tumour-node-metastasis (TNM) staging system, which is based on data from large multicent...

The standard approach to staging of lung cancer in patients with pleural effusion (clinical M1a) is thoracentesis followed by pleural biopsies if the cytologic analysis is negative. If pleural biopsy findings are negative, endobronchial ultrasound-guided transbronchial needle aspiration is used to complete the staging process and, in some cases, obtain diagnosis. In this case series we report 7...

IMPORTANCE Different staging systems for extraocular retinoblastoma have been published, but to date they have not been validated in large cohorts. OBJECTIVE To review 533 patients (and pathology slides) with retinoblastoma included in 4 protocols (January 1, 1988, to December 31, 2009) who received uniform treatment. DESIGN AND SETTING Retrospective review in a hospital setting. A critical...

UNLABELLED The value of PET or PET/CT with (18)F-FDG for the staging of penile cancer has yet to be determined. The objective of this study was to investigate the pattern of (18)F-FDG uptake in the primary malignancy and its metastases and to determine the diagnostic value of (18)F-FDG PET/CT in the staging and restaging of penile cancer. METHODS Thirteen patients (mean +/- SD age, 64 +/- 14....

A prerequisite to study the molecular genetic pathways of pollen and anther development is an accurate staging system for reproductive development. However in barley, floret formation occurs mainly within the pseudostem, which makes the observation of floret development and access to the floret particularly difficult without dissecting the plant. Thus selecting stages for molecular analysis can...