The currently adopted staging system for
lung cancer is the seventh edition of the TNM staging edited by Union for International
Cancer Control (UICC) in January, 2009. In recent years, with the advances of techniques in
lung cancer diagnosis and the treatment trends towards precision treatment modalities such as individualized
therapy and
molecular targeted therapy, the survival and prognosis of
lung cancer has been significantly improved. The old staging standard is difficult to satisfy the currentrapidly developing clinical needs. Therefore, the International
Lung Cancer Research Society (International Association for the Study of
Lung Cancer, IASLC) updated the stage of
lung cancer in 2015, and the forthcoming eighth edition of the TNM Classification for
Lung Cancer, which will be formally adopted in Jan. 2017, has been published in Journal of Thoracic Oncology. The new staging system has adopted 35 databases from 16 countries, including 94,708 cases treated between 1999 and 2010. The advantages of the new staging lies in its higher prognosis prediction and clinical guidance value.