A Surgeon's Checklist for a Standardized Staging Procedure in Patients with Cancer of the Stomach

Abstract

By use of a formal staging system the examiner usually is forced to be more complete and more precise than he might be without such a system. A checklist is didactically helpful for a surgeon because it asks him to answer questions systematically, not forgetting any one item that might be of great influence in choosing adequate surgery for an individual patient or determining his prognosis. Every checklist needs special instructions for filling in the right information obtainable since all items are subjected to some form of interpretation. Instructions minimize interpretational defects. An excellent aid for understanding items are graphs and simple illustrations. A checklist should be comfortable and short. For staging of gastric cancer patients it should include the following items: date of classification, location, size, multiplicity, depth of penetration of primary tumor, lymph-node involvement, and metastasis in accordance with internationally used classifications, type of resection, and lymph-node removal, resection with curative intention, or for palliation.

Key Words:

• Checklist
• gastric cancer
• staging
• TNM