This staging system is described right on our site. Go to the cancer facts page (http://www.oralcancerfoundation.org/facts.htm) and scan down to the blue link that says stages of cancer. Everything that defines the different stages is there, using either system. Please note the comment that stages are a way of giving doctors a definite (not subjective) way of describing your cancer when talking about it with each other, when determining treatment plans, and recording outcomes. While it is true that higher stages have poorer outcomes in the long run, that is not any kind of hard and fast rule. So don't get freaked out by stages. There are those of us out here that have had "late stage" cancers and are still around to talk about it. The reasons that this cancer reoccurs has nothing to do with staging. People who have had late stage cancers do not have reoccurences more than those with early stage cancers.