‘Incidentalomas’ and Stage Zero Cancer -- A Semantic Dilemma with Medical Consequences

One of the measures by which oncologists describe the severity of a malignancy is according to its stage, with Stage 4 being the most deadly. There is a certain amount of arbitrariness to the labeling scheme, and the details vary according to the type of cancer. But Stage 4 refers, in general, to those that have spread, or metastasized, beyond the original site -- to a distant lymph node or organ. Advanced Stage 4 cancers are almost never curable, and the treatments can be so devastating that it is often not clear whether a few extra months of life is something to be desired. Then there are what the doctors call Stage 0 -- abnormal cells that may or may not ever become a problem. Tara Parker Pope wrote about these today in the New York Times, and she introduces a term I hadn’t encountered before: incidentalomas — “the name ...