Lung Cancer - Chapter 3 staging the disease
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Well, after the diagnosis of lung cancer's been made,
it's important to establish the extent of the cancer, that is whether
it's just confined to the lung or whether it's spread to other organs
because this determines how treatment's best delivered.
The test that we use in addition to a chest X-ray and a CAT scan,
which obviously are required
as the first step in establishing that the person's got lung cancer,
includes scans of the brain and more
recently, we've realised the most valuable test of all is the PET scan.
PET' stands for 'Positron Emission Tomography'
and this is a scan which uses a glucose tracer or radioactive glucose
that we can follow around the body
with cameras that pick up the presence of the glucose
in various organs.
When we stage a cancer, we usually grade it on a four-point scale from
stage one, which is the earliest
stage, through to stage four, which is the most advanced stage.
