This Article  • Full text PDF  • Reply to article  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Similar articles in this journal  Social Bookmarking   What's this?

JIM HOKANSON, PHD

Arch Otolaryngol Head Neck Surg. 1991;117(4):371.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

The existing TNM system was based on factors chosen, in part, because they could be obtained through a clinical examination by a physician trained to observe them. Also, the factors were chosen because they were considered to be important by the experts in the field. Yet, the sense of the comments from many cancer experts is that prognosis is not related to TNM values. If the fundamental biology of laryngeal cancer is not determined by the factors that can be observed clinically, then additional refinements cannot, theoretically, ever be made that would allow the TNM system to guide therapeutic decisions or to predict the prognosis for an individual patient.

Another sense from the comments by other observers is that "technology-based" information (eg, magnetic resonance imaging, biologic markers, and molecular genetics) should be incorporated into the process of assessing prognosis. Some real problems exist here, very analogous to what has happened . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

Author Affiliations
Galveston, Tex

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter     What's this?