Staging Guidance - Med Onc Charts

Here are a few tips to follow when entering staging information on med onc charts:

• When known, collect AJCC stage, TNM values, and Limited or Extensive stage (Small cell lung cancer only)
• Do not collect staging from any other staging systems such as ISS, R-ISS, MASS, or RAI
• Staging information can be collected from anywhere within the EMR
• T, N, and M categories may have a lowercase letter in front of them, which indicates if it is a clinical or pathologic classification
  • A clinical stage is noted with a "c" - Example: cT1
  • A pathologic stage is noted with a "p" - Example: pN2
• Do not collect post treatment staging. Post treatment staging may be indicated by adding a lowercase "y" (ypT, ypN) or an "r" for staging of recurrence/progression (rcT, rpT)
• If the documented stage does not indicate if it is clinical or pathologic, please enter the stage as pathologic
• In cases of mixed TNM staging such as pT1, cN2, cM0, enter the values as they are documented and choose "Not Documented" for any values that are not specified. For the example given, you would choose pathologic T1, clinical N2, clinical M0, and not documented for all other categories. 

I hope this helps to clarify some of the confusion regarding staging. Feel free to leave comments or questions, we would love to hear from you! 😊