Dr. Tsao on Rationale for Staging Renal Cell Carcinoma

Che-Kai Tsao, MD, an associate professor at Mount Sinai Health, discusses the rationale behind staging disease, especially in the context of when patients are diagnosed with renal cell carcinoma (RCC).

Generally staging serves to characterize the extent of the disease and is performed in all types of cancers, explains Tsao. In solid tumors, such as RCC, the extent of the disease is related to whether patients can be cured with surgery or other modalities without recurrence.

It is important to determine a patient’s diagnosis upfront in earlier stages of the disease when there is a better chance of curing those patients, ultimately providing better outcomes, says Tsao. The majority of metastatic patients with RCC will not be cured and the outcomes will not be as good as those with early-stage disease, concludes Tsao.