Following a diagnosis of lung cancer, your physician will need to learn the stage, or extent, to which the disease has progressed so you can receive the appropriate treatment. Staging is a careful process to find out whether the cancer has spread and to what other parts of the body.

Methods of staging include:

• Needle or Surgical Biopsy involves a surgeon removing a sample of the tissue to learn whether a patient’s lung cancer has spread to the lymph nodes in the chest.
• Your doctor may also order CT scans to detect the spread of lung cancer to the lymph nodes and other parts of the body, including the brain, liver and other abdominal organs.
• Radionuclide scans of the bones may be done to indicate whether the lung cancer has spread to the bones.
• An MRI may be required if a more detailed study is needed to determine the extent of cancer spread.
• To get more information about whether or not a lung cancer has spread, your doctor my want to perform a mediastinoscopy. In this procedure, performed in the operating room with the patient under general anesthesia, the surgeon will insert an endoscope through a small incision at the top of the chest. The surgical team will examine the area around the airways and take samples of lymph nodes. This diagnostic step helps the cancer doctors to determine which patients could benefit from surgery. Jefferson thoracic surgeons use the latest technique, called video mediastinoscopy, which helps them navigate through the delicate structures of the chest, see the lung area better, and thoroughly biopsy the surrounding lymph nodes.