Although most oncologists would agree that defining the stage of a cancer is useful in decision making and the establishment of prognosis, a team have recently formally shown this to be the case for patients with colon cancer. They prospectively assessed 536 patients who underwent resection for colon cancer with curative intent between 1999 and 2007. They established the clinicopathological variables using techniques such as CT to determine the radiological stage (T1, T2, T3 or T4 and N0, N1 or N2 disease). The investigators were able to clearly show that the clinical stage of a patient in the pre-operative setting is an independent prognostic indicator of long-term survival.