What do the various stages of bladder cancer diagnosis mean?
All cancers, including bladder cancer, are staged. What staging refers to, essentially, is categorizing the disease at its presentation, both in terms of its extent, as well as its involvement, and the reason for this is to be able to give treatment recommendations based on good, sound judgement, and based on previous experience. Most patients with bladder cancer present with low grade, Stage One or Stage T1 disease. A few patients present with T2 disease, some have T3 and a few have T4. If we didn't have these kind of staging conventions, if you just came in and said "You've got bladder cancer, I'm going to take your bladder out", most patients would be way over-treated, because only patients who have a more invasive disease need to have their bladder removed. On the other hand, if you didn't have the staging convention and you examined someone's bladder and said, "Well, you've got bladder cancer, I'm just going to put medication into your bladder", you'd under-treat a large number of patients who would need to have their bladder removed. Staging is a convention where we can, based on solid data, based on published data, we can make solid and responsive treatment recommendation. Staging is also a convention where we can learn the behaviour of the disease, and we can see what theraputic or treatment options work better for certain stages and not for others. Finally, a stage is a way where physicians can discuss amongst themselves what therapy seems to be working, so that we make sure we're all talking about apples and apples, and not apples and oranges.
