Survival Rates

rizzo15
rizzo15 Member Posts: 153 Member
edited March 2014 in Breast Cancer #1
While I agree with my doctors that it is not helpful to look at survival statistics...because for each individual you are either 100% alive or 100% deceased. I just discovered that the survival statistics from the Merck Manual and the Susan Love Breast book are pretty old (ladies diagnosed from 1983 to 1987). So, this should be good news to all of us. Almost all the current chemo therapies were not even discovered yet! And we all know that chemo is very effective and is considered the "Gold Standard" treatment...even my radiation oncologist doctor says this. And in those days, they didn't use all three treatments of surgery, chemo, and radiation. One or two treatments were sometimes used, but use of all three approaches was not common in those days. Here are the statistics you frequently see published, so just remember this is old, old data:

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The 6 year survival rates for the different stages of breast cancer are:

Stage I: >94%
StageIIA: 80%
StageIIB: 63%
StageIIIA and III: 50%
Stage IV: 10%

These statistics were obtained from the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End results Program (SEER) of the National Cancer Institute. These are the numbers for breast cancer patients diagnosed between 1983 and 1987. Over 50,000 patients participated in this study.

Comments

  • squeeboo
    squeeboo Member Posts: 29
    #2
    You have a very good point. I also try to keep in mind that research is moving so fast these days that even 2 or 3 years from now there will likely be huge advances in treatment, even for mets.
  • rizzo15
    rizzo15 Member Posts: 153 Member
    #3
    squeeboo said:

    You have a very good point. I also try to keep in mind that research is moving so fast these days that even 2 or 3 years from now there will likely be huge advances in treatment, even for mets.

    Absolutely! Absolutely huge advances in treatment within the past 2-3 years alone. And the drugs that are being developed for other kinds of cancer are often effective for breast cancer. So that is what keeps my oncologist hopeful. He has been an oncologist for 30+ years and he claims the advances have been awesome. He was quite impressed to hear that my husband is a 52-year survivor of testicle cancer. My husband was a few months old he was diagnosed. The Air Force doctor said that if they did nothing, it was 100% that the baby would die. They radiated the heck out of him after removing one testicle. They had no idea if it would work or would cause even more cancer as a result of radiation. 40+ years later, when that same Air Force doctor coincidentally did a physical exam on my father-in-law, the doctor asked if he was related to a certain baby with testicle cancer back in 1951. The doc was overjoyed to hear that all was well with my husband. The doctor said that my husband was one of the first to completely recover from that experimental therapy. So you never know. You just never know. I told my oncologist about my husband's cancer...now whenever he sees me he always says, "Another 50 years, that's all we ask!"
  • blossomtime
    blossomtime Member Posts: 98
    #4
    Yes I think survival rates can be very disturbing. But when I went to MD Anderson the doctor there said stage IIB had 70% chance of cure rate. I plan to be in that percentage. He said to think of it as the surgery got all the cancer and I am cured but in the off chance that a single little cancer cell is floating aroung thats why I would get chemo and radiation. Talking about new treatments, I even read that they are in level III clinical trial on 2 different meds that are vaccines targeted to people already diagnosed with breast cancer. Also read it is on the FDA fast track. So yes new things on horizon. I will be watching for that one. Happy thoughts!
  • blossomtime
    blossomtime Member Posts: 98
    #5
    Yes I think survival rates can be very disturbing. But when I went to MD Anderson the doctor there said stage IIB had 70% chance of cure rate. I plan to be in that percentage. He said to think of it as the surgery got all the cancer and I am cured but in the off chance that a single little cancer cell is floating aroung thats why I would get chemo and radiation. Talking about new treatments, I even read that they are in level III clinical trial on 2 different meds that are vaccines targeted to people already diagnosed with breast cancer. Also read it is on the FDA fast track. So yes new things on horizon. I will be watching for that one. Happy thoughts!

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