The stage of a lung cancer is very important in the clinical management of a patient. Staging is based on diagnostic evaluations as noted above. TX Primary tumour cannot be assessed, or tumour proven by the presence of malignant cells in sputum or bronchial washings but not visualised by imaging or bronchoscopy.
Most pleural effusions associated with lung cancer are due to tumour.
However, there are a few patients in whom multiple cytopathology examinations of pleural fluid show no tumour. In these cases, the fluid is non bloody and is not an exudate. When these elements and clinical judgement dictate that the effusion is not related to the tumour, the effusion is not related to the tumour, the effusion should be excluded as a staging element and the patient s disease should be staged T1, T2 or T3. Pericardial effusion is classified according to the same rules. There are four stages, each corresponding to one or more TNM classification.