The Eighth Edition of TNM: Implications for the Surgical Oncologist

Excerpt

Since 1977, the American Joint Committee on Cancer (AJCC) has published eight editions of cancer staging manuals using contemporary evidenced-based literature to build a common language of cancer for the care of cancer patients by clinicians and for the cancer surveillance community. The interval between these editions, approximately 5–7 years, has been necessary to balance the publication of a critical number of important changes in knowledge of cancer with a need for longitudinal comparison of cancer incidence, prognosis, and survival. There were a number of new chapters and changes in the 7th edition of the AJCC Cancer Staging Manual that were published in an overview editorial from 2010.1 In the 8th edition, updated information regarding new and clinically relevant prognostic molecular markers has been added to traditional anatomical staging to ensure that the clinical and pathological classification of cancer will remain relevant to the surgical oncology community and to those who have oversight for cancer surveillance.2 …