When you or your loved one receives a diagnosis of cancer, it’s natural to wonder what the future holds. One of the first questions many cancer patients ask their doctor is, “What’s my prognosis?” Learning about your prognosis can help you to make plans for you and your family’s future. If you decide to research this question on your own, it’s helpful to know what factors affect a cancer patient’s survival rate.
Cancer is a general term that applies to hundreds of diseases that share a few common features. For this reason, you must not compare your cancer prognosis with that of another patient. All cancers share the characteristic of abnormal cells that can grow and spread, or metastasize, to other parts of the body. Doctors further group cancerous tumors according to where they began in the body and how their cells look under a microscope.
Cancer statistics are based on large populations of individuals with the same type of cancer, and some rare types of cancers don’t have enough patients to formulate accurate statistical estimates.
Published cancer statistics are averages based on large populations of cancer patients with varying individual features. For example, if you read that 75% of all patients with your type of cancer survive the disease, you might feel encouraged or discouraged about how these odds represent your individual chances of survival. In fact, prognosis depends on several factors, including your age, how aggressive your cancer is, the extent of the disease, your overall state of health, and how you respond to treatment.
Statisticians frequently share cancer statistics in terms of 5-year survival rates to make the term consistent and meaningful to researchers. If you see that the 5-year survival rate of colon cancer is 85%, this seems to imply that 15% of colon cancer patients die, and the other 85% of the patients experienced a cure. However, a 5-year survival rate includes all patients alive five years after their diagnosis, regardless of disease status. Therefore, that 85% includes patients in remission, those still in treatment, and those that are managing a disease recurrence. Furthermore, a cancer patient’s prognosis can change over time as treatment progresses.
Although published statistics can give you an overall idea about the outlook for your type of cancer, your doctor or oncologist is the best source of information about what to expect. Your doctor may use words like “excellent,” “good,” or “guarded” to describe your chances of surviving the disease. It’s important to remember that not even the doctor can predict exactly what will happen during the course of an individual cancer patient’s treatment. Hundreds of new cancer treatments are in development in clinical trials, and one of these new studies could hold the key to a better response down the road.
Related Article: Breast Cancer Survival Rates
Source:
Dollinger, M., Rosenbaum, E.H., & Cable, G. (1994). Everyone's Guide to Cancer Therapy. Andrews and McMeel, Kansas City.
