Abstract:
Background and purpose: Cancer is a common disease. Multidisciplinary approach is the best model for cancer treatment. Cancer staging is the basis for diagnosis, treatments and prediction of prognosis.The survey is to give an overview of the current application of cancer multidisciplinary approach and UICC or other international cancer staging in mainland China. We made inquiries to our Chinese oncologists’ experience of using these staging and share their comments and recommendations. For those cancers common in China, Chinese oncologists and academic societies should provide more information of staging, therapies, outcome, prognostic predictors of prognosis, etc. to make international stage systems, like UICC or AJCC, a more appropriate, accurate and acceptable guide to individual patients’ staging and treatment, to predict outcome and to facilitate clinical trials better. Methods: This survey was done from 2012 to 2013 by questionnaires. The questions were answered for 10 major cancers in China (liver cancer, esophageal cancer, nasopharyngeal carcinoma, lung carcinoma, breast cancer, gastric cancer, colorectal cancer, gynecologic cancer, prostate cancer and lymphoma). Thirty-three questionnaires have been answered by national wide hospitals including provincial cancer hospitals, district cancer hospitals and departments of oncology in general hospitals. We also site visited 7 grade B hospitals. Results: Multidisciplinary approach is not widely used in the hospitals. UICC or AJCC stages have been widely used for 10 cancers, but for cancers that were uncommon in the West; while common in China (nasopharyngeal carcinoma, liver cancer) the staging proposed by Chinese society have also been used to replace UICC/AJCC. Conclusion: We suggest a wild implementation of multidisciplinary approach. For those cancers common in China Chinese oncologists and academic societies should provide more information of staging, therapies, outcome, prognostic predictors of prognosis etc. to make international stage systems, like UICC or AJCC, a more appropriate, accurate and acceptable guide to individual patients’ staging and treatments, to predict outcome and to facilitate clinical trials better.

Key words: Cancer, Multidisciplinary approach, Cancer staging, Tumor stageing system