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SEER Training Modules
11/27/12 - The NCI is working on updating materials.

Quiz: What is Collaborative Stage (CS)?

  1. Cancer stage historically has been collected using three different staging systems having three different purposes, data sets and rules.
  2. American Joint Committee on Cancer, American College of Surgeons Commission on Cancer, and National Cancer Institute/SEER Program are the only collaborators in the development of Collaborative Staging System.
  3. Although three different staging systems use three different sets of rules, they share a common purpose.
  4. Timing of data is different among the three systems, and so are rules for integrating clinical and pathological data.
  5. Disadvantages of using three different staging systems include compromised data quality, duplication of effort, and unnecessary cost and labor.
  6. Collaborative Stage makes it possible for all registries to collect a unified data set and report to central agencies.
  7. Collaborative Stage is a staging system, not a coding system.
  8. The structure of CS is adapted from SEER Extent of Disease (EOD) Coding using the AJCC 6th edition and SEER Summary Stage 2000.
  9. The computer algorithm is used to derive the stage from the CS data elements and it is only used at the central registry.
  10. With Collaborative Staging, clinical and pathological information can be combined to come up with a mixed or best stage.
  11. Collaborative Stage coding provides the information to generate staging TNM as pathological, clinical, or mixed stage.
  12. In addition to five existing data items (tumor size, extension, and lymph node items), there are ten new data items including metastases at diagnosis, three "method of evaluation (TNM)," and six "site specific" factors.