Stage categories of disease at diagnosis were local/regional, distant, and unstaged.
We examined the distribution of stage of disease at diagnosis for cancers of the colon and rectum, female breast, cervix uteri, and prostate using the SEER historical stage categories of localized, regional, and distant disease [ 27].
Four different stage categories of early embryogenesis are shown in Figure 5. Green fluorescence represents the mRNA localization pattern for that transcript/gene and red fluorescence is showing the position of nuclei within the organism at that stage.
Localised tumours were always classified separately and those remaining were divided into 1 4 categories (regional metastases; distant metastases; non-localised, extent unknown; unknown) depending on the site; the unknown stage category comprised of 10 20% of tumours.
The "unknown" stage category consisted primarily of locally advanced tumors (T3 or T4) with unknown N and/or M stage.
Furthermore, it is evident that treatment response shows a degree of heterogeneity between individual patients within a specific stage category, suggesting a spectrum of chemoradiation sensitivity.
The proportions were similar in each grade and stage category, and the distribution of PSA levels did not significantly differ between patients with or without fusion (Table 1).
Additionally, we suggest a method for defining stage categories in the presence of specific missing T, N, or M components.
We designed an algorithm allowing assignment of stage categories, despite specific missing T, N, or M values.
Percentages for patients in the stage categories are of patients with data.
We reanalyzed the data by stage and tumor size after accounting for delayed reporting, assuming that delayed reporting for each tumor size and stage category was similar to that of all invasive cases combined.
