Scenario: Patient diagnosed with clinical cT1 cN0 cM0 Stage 1 cancer, no surgical resection of primary site is done. No biopsy of metastatic site is done. The patient is not eligible for pathologic staging. Pathologic TNM Categories are left BLANK because the patient is not eligible for pathologic stage.
Question: How would I assign the path Stage Group in the registry software?
- 99
- BLANK
Answer: 99
Discussion:
The STORE manual does instruct to code to 99 in the Path Stage Group field when any TNM combination does not result in a valid stage group. Since BLANK pathologic TNM categories do not derive a valid stage group, 99 would be applicable. We also took a deep dive on the CAnswer Forum to try to gain further perspective. We came across the posts below. We are under the impression that the only time the Path Stage Group field is left BLANK is if the patient is eligible for yc or yp Stage.
CAnswer Forum Posts