Most cancers survivable, new data confirms

Cancer most certainly appears among the top dread diseases that we hope to never be diagnosed with, or have a loved-one diagnosed with. Year after year its among the top killer of people in the developed world, along with cardiovascular disease, and most of use have probably been touched by cancer in some way. But as our understanding of the complex cellular behavior we call cancer increases, we are learning that diagnosis is far from a death sentence.

Researchers in Spain undertook an ambitious study of cancer survival, documenting all cancer diagnoses between 1995 and 1999 then tracking them until the end of 2004. This provided them with 57,622 cancer cases from which they could calculate 5-year survival rates (the percentage of people diagnosed with cancer that lived at least an additional 5-years.) Their results are published in the Annals of Oncology.

The cancers analyzed, and their corresponding 5-year survival rates:

Breast: 83%

Lung: 10%

Colorectal: 50-55%

Prostate: 76%

Ovarian: 70% in young patients, 19% in the elderly

Testicular: 95%

Melanoma (skin): 85%

Hodgkin's lymphoma: 92% among young patients, 50% among the elderly.

Spain's survival rates are on par with the rest of Europe (within 2%). Continent-wide, cancer patients are most likely to survive in Finland, Sweden, Norway, and Iceland, and least likely to survive in the Czech Republic, Poland, and Slovenia.

One important caveat: Increased screening technology can artificially increase five year survival, not by actually lengthening life or treating cancer, but simply by moving the time of detection back in time. For example, consider two patients who die on the same day of the same type of cancer. Patient A was diagnosed a year earlier after a tumor began causing symptoms. Patient B was diagnosed 7 years earlier by an advanced screening test that used a high resolution CT-scan to detect the tumor when it was just a tiny speck. In this case, Patient B will be listed as a "survivor" in the 5-year survival statistics, and patient A will be listed as "did not survive," even though both patients died, of the same type of cancer, on the same day.