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Esophageal cancer staging is done to know the extensiveness and intensity of the prevalence of the disease as it is vital to decide on the treatment option by doctors. Even though various tests and scans offer certain quantity of information about the esophageal cancer stages, the physician might not be very sure about the extensiveness and prevalence of the disease unless they view for themselves by performing a surgery.

In reality different methods are used for esophageal cancer staging. One type of staging is known as the number system while the other one is known as the TNM system. The term “TNM” is the short form for tumor, nodes and metastasis and this type of staging is used for ascertaining the size of the primary tumors, whether the lymph nodes have got affected by the disease and whether esophageal cancer has spread to other parts of the body or not. T1 denotes the presence of cancer cells inside the inner layer of the esophagus while T2 denotes the presence of cancer cells present inside the muscularis or muscle of esophagus, T3 denotes the penetration of cancer cells inside the esophagus’ external membrane covering and T4 denotes the presence of cancer cells getting developed in various other structures of the body or the body organs near to the food pipe.

Esophageal cancer N staging can be done in two methods. N0 is said to be a stage where the lymph nodes might not have cancer cells, while N1 denotes the presence of tumor cells near the lymph nodes. Esophageal cancer M staging can be classified as M0- when cancer has not spread to the organs near by the esophagus and as M1- when esophageal cancer has spread to different parts of the body.

The staging involving numbers can be classified as five major stages called as stage 0, 1, 2, 3 and 4. During stage 0 cancer cells are said to be confined inside the lining of esophagus alone and hence might not be able to diagnose them, they might exhibit only some or not symptoms. The risk of this disease spreading to various other regions is low. In the stage 1 the cancerous cells would be present in the top layers of the esophagus or in less esophageal regions. In the stage 2 cancerous cells would be seen in the wall of the esophagus muscle layers or near the lymph nodes. During stage 3 esophageal cancer would be seen in the lymph nodes near the esophageal body tissues but would not have spread to many parts of the body. The stage 4 esophageal cancer disease can be further classified as stage IVa and IVb. In the stage IVa cancer would be spread to the lymph nodes present far away from the esophagus and stage IVb esophageal cancer would signify the spread of esophageal cancer to various other parts of the body. Hence stage IVb esophageal cancer is considered as the riskiest of all.