What does it mean when you are told a patient's cancer is a level 5?

Answer 1

I was going to answer this until I read bellydoc's' answer, which is exactly correct.
My family, which is 'full of cancers' has had the disease referred to in terms of 'levels' and 'stages'. I once had a level 2 skin cancer which the doctor told me was actually no worse than a moderate sunburn because it hadn't permeated too deeply into the skin. It was also a basal cell carcinoma which is the most easily curable.
So it was a 'low level type of tumour'.
Level 5 is, without a doubt, very serious, but it is NOT incurable as yet!
Make sure and read "BELLYDOC'S" answer a couple of times as it is chalk full of excellent information. God belss him too.
It is going to take some very aggressive treatment to stop it, but don't give up the hope of having it go into remission and/or be cured!
God Bless you and thanks for reading.

Answer 2

Cancer is reported as being in a Stage not Level. There is no level 5. Level 4 is the worst meaning that the cancer has spread to multiple distant sites away from the primary site.

Answer 3

There is some confusion in your question that the people answering above are reacting to correctly. The consideration of cancer statistics and prognostics involves something called stage grouping. Stages of cancer relate to the concept that an early cancer will be small and have no signs of spread, a slightly later stage may be a larger tumor and then even later, there may be signs of cancer in local lymph nodes. When there is cancer found in distant sites, this is generally late-stage disease and probably will not be curable with surgery and/or chemotherapy.

The stage groupings for cancers are defined by specific characteristics of each kind of cancer. In general, stage 1 is used to denote a small tumor, stage 2 is a larger tumor, stage 3 shows signs of spread into local lymph nodes or advancement through important tissue layers, and stage 4 involves distant spread. There is no stage 5, and the people above are correct about that. But that is STAGE. You asked about LEVEL.

There is one type of cancer in which the terminology of "level" is used. This is melanoma, a skin cancer that is based on the type of cells that make skin have color (melanocytes). Melanoma is an aggressive skin cancer which tends to spread rapidly, and one of the characteristics that help us understand how much risk of distant spread there is involves the thickness of the tumor in the skin. There are 2 main methods for evaluating the thickness of this type of skin cancer, both of them describe tumors in terms of LEVEL.

The current thinking about melanomas is that there are generally 3 levels to be concerned about. These are "thin", "intermediate", and "thick". A thin melanoma is less than a millimeter deep, intermediate is up to 4 millimeters, and thick is more than that. The reason that these divisions are chosen is that people who have thin melanomas need only about a centimeter of skin removed around the tumor and have a low probability of distant spread, intermediate tumors need more resection and have a higher likelihood of distant spread, and thick melanomas are high probability for distant spread. This system is called "Breslow levels".

An older system classified melanomas based on which microscopic layer of the skin the cancer had invaded into. This was called the "Clark level" and when the cancer had gone all the way through the levels of the skin into the underlying fat, it was called a "Clark level 5". In general, the clark level has fallen out of favor because the difference between Clark levels is relative to the thickness of the patient's skin. Someone with very thick skin could have an intermediate or even thick tumor with a low Clark level, and because it is really a thick tumor, it would behave badly. The Clark level doesn't do as good a job helping us to predict the cancer's behavior.

There is one exception however. In older people with very very thin skin, or in people who have tumors on thin-skinned parts of the body, sometimes a relatively thin tumor actually goes through all the layers. When the tumor is through all the layers (Clark level 5) it may behave WORSE than the Breslow thickness would predict.

The bottom line is this. If you are talking about a melanoma type skin cancer, then the terminology of "level 5" makes sense. It means that the tumor is all the way through the skin and has a high probability of spread. If you aren't talking about a melanoma, then the terminology of "level 5" has no meaning that I'm aware of.

The questions to ask the doctor are "what specific kind of cancer is it?", "what is the estimated STAGE of the cancer?", and "what is the 5 year survival rate for this type of cancer, at this stage, in a patient with this particular underlying level of health?"

I hope that helps.

Feel free to contact me if you have further questions.

Answer 4

Grading systems are different for each type of cancer. For example, pathologists use the Gleason system to describe the degree of differentiation of prostate cancer cells. The Gleason system uses scores ranging from Grade 2 to Grade 10. Lower Gleason scores describe well-differentiated, less aggressive tumors. Higher scores describe poorly differentiated, more aggressive tumors. Other grading systems include the Bloom-Richardson system for breast cancer and the Fuhrman system for kidney cancer.

The patient's Oncologist would be the one to answer your questions.

Answer 5

i have not heard of a level 5 and i am a r.n. 4 and 5 is usually combined together. That means there usually is no more treatment from a surgical /chemo/radiation standpoint and only palliative(making the person comfortable as possible until the end)

Answer 6

There is no level in the disease Cancer. There are Grades and Stages. Grades are the rate at which the cancerous cells split for multiplication. Staging is for assessing the position and severity of the disease. It is staged only upto IV and there is no stage V.

The stage of a cancer is a descriptor (usually numbers I to IV) of how much the cancer has spread. The stage often takes into account the size of a tumor, how deep it has penetrated, whether it has invaded adjacent organs, if and how many lymph nodes it has metastasized to, and whether it has spread to distant organs. Staging of cancer is important because the stage at diagnosis is the biggest predictor of survival, and treatments are often changed based on the stage.

Overall Stage Grouping is also referred to as Roman Numeral Staging. This system uses numerals I, II, III, and IV to describe the progression of cancer.

Stage I cancers are localized to one part of the body.
Stage II cancers are locally advanced, as are Stage III cancers. Whether a cancer is designated as Stage II or Stage III can depend on the specific type of cancer; for example, in Hodgkin's Disease, Stage II indicates affected lymph nodes on only one side of the diaphragm, whereas Stage III indicates affected lymph nodes above and below the diaphragm. The specific criteria for Stages II and III therefore differ according to diagnosis.
Stage IV cancers have often metastasized, or spread to other organs or throughout the body.

So you can yourself assess the position. It is very sad and let us all together pray for whatever possible.

Answer 7

Stage 0: local cancer not very big
Stage 1: bigger cancer
Stage 3: Cancer has spread to lymph nodes
Stage 4: Cancer is incurable and has spread throughout the body

There is no stage 5.

Answer 8

I do know level 4 is bad so level 5 is not good at all.

Answer 9

Don't go on any long trips. If your have any one you wanted to talk too, now would be the best time!...

It means, the Cancer in the body has had a long time to establish and spead and there is not much hope of surviving!

Answer 10

It means things are really bad, but not always does it mean a death sentence. Check with your oncologist for treatment options.