Pretreatment TNM staging of childhood rhabdomyosarcoma

Abstract

A pretreatment TNM staging system for childhood rhabdomyosarcoma, developed with data from IRS-II, was not as predictive of patient outcome when applied prospectively to patients treated in the IRS-III trial. These findings could be due to differences in the management strategy used for IRS-III or the statistical variability in the model-fitting process used to develop the staging system. This demonstrates the need for continual reevaluation of staging systems as patient evaluation and treatment innovations are developed.