The clinical staging of lung cancer through imaging: a radiologist's guide to the revised staging system and rationale for the changes.

In 2009, the International Union Against Cancer and the American Joint Committee on Cancer accepted a revised staging system for the staging of lung cancer. Changes to the staging system were made to correlate patient survival more accurately with characteristics of the primary tumor (T) and presence or extent of nodal (N) and metastatic disease (M). Many changes were made to the staging system, most notably within the tumor (T) and metastases (M) designations. There are many ways to clinical stage lung cancer, but PET-CT remains one of the most accurate noninvasive methods.