Can Biologic Aggressiveness and Metastatic Potential of Primary Lung Cancer Be Predicted from Clinical Staging Alone?

The future biologic aggressiveness and metastatic potential of lung cancer, as in other cancers, cannot be predetermined from the current clinical information, imaging studies, and pathologic examination whose purpose is to provide diagnosis and mutation studies and molecular drivers only in making decision for treatment. There is a need for better understanding of the biologic characteristics and aggressiveness of lung cancer. The most that is achieved from clinical staging and pathologic staging is in the planning of treatment of lung cancer and predicting prognosis. Aggressive biologic behavior to come is not within the domain of clinical staging or pathologic staging.