title: Unstaged cancer in the United States: a population-based study.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  The current study examines unstaged disease for 18 cancer sites in the United States according to the influence of age, sex, race, marital status, incidence, and lethality.
  
  
  METHODS
  Analyses are based on 1,040,381 male and 1,011,355 female incident cancer cases diagnosed during 2000 through 2007. Data were collected by population-based cancer registries in the National Cancer Institute's Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results Program.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The level of unstaged disease was greater in more lethal cancers (e.g., liver, esophagus, and pancreas) compared with less deadly cancers (i.e., colon, urinary bladder, and female breast). Unstaged disease increased with age and is greater among non-married patients. Blacks compared with whites experienced significantly higher levels of unstaged cancers of the stomach, rectum, colon, skin (melanoma), urinary bladder, thyroid, breast, corpus, cervix, and ovaries, but lower levels of unstaged liver, lung and bronchial cancers. Males compared with females experienced significantly lower levels of unstaged cancers of the liver, pancreas, esophagus, and stomach, but significantly higher levels of unstaged lung and bronchial cancer and thyroid cancer. The percent of unstaged cancer significantly decreased over the study period for 15 of the 18 cancer sites.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Tumor staging directly affects treatment options and survival, so it is recommended that further research focus on why a decrease in unstaged disease did not occur for all of the cancer sites considered from 2000 to 2007, and why there are differential levels of staging between whites and blacks, males and females for several of the cancer sites.
authors.affiliation: Department of Health Science at Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah, USA. Ray_Merrill@byu.edu
authors.forename: Ray M
authors.initials: RM
authors.lastname: Merrill
authors.forename: Arielle
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Sloan
authors.forename: Allison E
authors.initials: AE
authors.lastname: Anderson
authors.forename: Karem
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Ryker
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000367:Age Factors; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D015994:Incidence; D007223:Infant; D007231:Infant, Newborn; D008297:Male; D017533:Marital Status; D008875:Middle Aged; D009367:Neoplasm Staging; D009369:Neoplasms / Q000453:epidemiology* / Q000401:mortality; D018426:SEER Program; D012737:Sex Factors; D014481:United States / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000208:ethnology; D055815:Young Adult