When a patient is informed that they have cancer, one of the very first question they ask is "What stage cancer do I have?" Even if the patient does not fully understand what staging actually means, most will understand that the worse the stage, the worse the survival outcome (stage 1 being the best and stage 4 being the worst). So how does a physician come up with the cancer stage for cancers of the mouth and throat? It actually does not involve a complicated algorithm in order t…