Bone and Soft Tissue Oncology

Patient and Family Education

Adult Soft Tissue Sarcoma

Stages

If a patient is diagnosed with soft tissue sarcoma, the doctor will order more tests to find out if cancer cells have spread to other parts of the body. This testing is called staging. A doctor needs to know the stage of the disease to plan treatment. Unlike most other cancers, the size of a soft tissue sarcoma is not as important as how the cancer cells look under a microscope. The more different the cancer cells look from normal cells, the higher (more advanced) the stage.

The following stages are used for adult soft tissue sarcoma:

Stage IA: The cancer cells look either very much like or somewhat different from normal cells. The cancer may be either near the surface or deep and is less than five centimeters (about two inches) in size, but it has not spread to lymph nodes or other parts of the body.
Stage IB: The cancer cells look either very much like or somewhat different from normal cells. The cancer is near the surface and more than five centimeters in size, but it has not spread to lymph nodes or other parts of the body.
Stage IIA: The cancer cells look either very much like or somewhat different from normal cells. The cancer is deep and more than five centimeters in size, but it has not spread to lymph nodes or other parts of the body.
Stage IIB: The cancer cells look very different from normal cells. The cancer is either near the surface or deep and is less than five centimeters in size, but it has not spread to lymph nodes or other parts of the body.
Stage IIC: The cancer cells look very different from normal cells. The cancer is near the surface and is more than five centimeters in size, but it has not spread to lymph nodes or other parts of the body.
Stage III: The cancer cells look very different from normal cells. The cancer is deep and is more than five centimeters in size, but it has not spread to lymph nodes or other parts of the body.
Stage IV: The cancer may have spread to lymph nodes in the area or may have spread to other parts of the body, such as the lungs, head, or neck.
Recurrent: The cancer has come back (recurred) after it has been treated. It may come back in the tissues where it first started, or it may come back in another part of the body.

This page was last updated on: September 21, 2009.