Understanding Your Stage of Ewing Sarcoma

Doctors use staging to find out if cancer has spread. It is important to know the stage of your cancer so that your doctor can decide what kind of treatment to recommend.

Even if the cancer has spread to another part of your body, it’s not called a new cancer. If Ewing sarcoma spreads to your lungs, it’s not considered lung cancer. It’s called metastatic Ewing sarcoma.

Ewing sarcomas of the bone can be staged with the same detailed staging system that is used for other types of bone cancers, which is known as the American Joint Commission on Cancer TNM staging system. However, for practical purposes (including deciding on treatment), doctors use a simpler system, dividing Ewing tumors into the following two groups:

• Localized cancer. This is cancer that has not spread. The tumor remains in the tissue where it developed or in nearby tissues, such as muscle or tendon.

• Metastatic cancer. This cancer has spread from where it started to other parts of the body, such as the lungs, other bones, or bone marrow. Less often it spreads to the lymph nodes or the liver.