Is cancer curable?

What do survival statistics mean?

When told they have cancer, many people ask their doctor
what their chance of survival is. While there are many factors that go into an
answer, there are statistics that may help. Statistics are numbers that
describe what happens to large groups of people with the same diagnosis.
Statistics cannot be applied to a specific person but may give some idea of
what to expect.

Here are some statistics that are used for cancer:

• Survival rate: the percentage of people who are alive at a certain time after diagnosis.
• Overall survival rate: the percentage of people with a certain type and stage of cancer who have not died from any cause during a period of time after diagnosis.
• Cancer (or disease)-specific survival rate: the percentage of people with a certain type and stage of cancer who have not died from their cancer during a set period of time after diagnosis.
• 5-year relative survival rate: the percentage of people who will be alive 5 years after diagnosis. It does not include those who die from other diseases.
  Survival rates can describe any length of time. However, researchers usually look at 5-year relative survival rates.

Cure rate of cancer Delhi India

With proper medical therapy, it is estimated that two-thirds of cancer patients will be cured completely in the current era. Two out of three patients with cancer will be completely cured of their illness!

Because cancer is a disease associated with lot of societal stigma and hidden away from the general public, cancer survivors who live long healthy lives are often hidden away from wider attention. On the other hand, people hear more often about “deaths due to incurable cancer” which leads to the incorrect misconception that cancer is not curable and always causes death.

What is the cure rate of some common cancers?

Cancer is highly curable, if caught at the right stage.
Common cancers like breast cancer, lung cancer, oral cancer, colorectal cancer,
lymphoma (blood cancer) and testicular cancer are all highly curable diseases.
However, it is important to be vigilant about cancer symptoms so that the
cancer can be discovered at an early stage. Most of the “incurable” cancers are
cancers that are missed and caught at a late stage when the disease has spread
(metastasized) throughout the body. Below are some examples of 5-year survivals
for some common cancers if caught at an early stage:

Breast cancer that is treated at the right time:

 Stage I breast cancer: 98-100%

 Stage II breast cancer: 90-95%

Even for patients with advanced stage disease, the survival
has increased dramatically over time:

Lung cancer that is treated at an early stage:

Lung cancer is the most common cancer of men in Delhi and is
a cancer where the prognosis has been dramatically improving. While lung cancer
is unfortunately often discovered at an advanced stage, early detection is
possible and associated with dramatic cure rates.

Stage I lung cancer: 80-90%

Stage II lung cancer: 55-65%

Lymphoma (blood cancers) that is treated at an early
stage:

Lymphomas are among the most common blood cancers. There are
a number of different types of lymphomas, which means that there are different
prognosis for each of them. But let us take the most common type of lymphoma in
India: Diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL). 3-year estimates for survival
are:

Good risk disease (R-IPI stage 0 or 1): About 90%

Intermediate risk disease (R-IPI stage 2): About 80%

Testicular cancer prognosis:

Testicular cancer is among the most common cancers of
adolescent boys and young men. It is a dramatically curable malignancy and cure
rates even at advanced stage are typically more than 80%.

Testicular cancer cure

There are 90% cure rates for testicular cancers.

Cure vs. Cured vs. Remission

For centuries, doctors have used the word “cure” to describe
a medical condition that’s completely gone and will never come back. For
example, if you have appendicitis and doctors remove your appendix, you’ve been
cured.

In the language of cancer, “cure” works differently.

Doctors can give you their best perspective, based on statistics from large groups of people, on whether or not your cancer will come back. But no doctor can guarantee that you’ll be cured.

There are two reasons for this:

Doctors don’t know everything about the disease yet.

Some cancer cells may remain somewhere in the body and can grow, divide, and become a new tumor. So doctors avoid saying you’re cured.

Instead of talking about “cures,” most medical professionals use the word “treatment.” If you have treatment, and your cancer doesn’t come back the rest of your life, you’re considered cured.

“Remission” is another key word. It means that your cancer symptoms have gone away. It’s different from a cure because remission doesn’t always last for the rest of your life.

Conclusion

The idea that cancer is a disease without cure is an
obsolete idea. In the modern era, cancers are associated with high cure rates
when caught at early stages. Even advanced cancers have been showing dramatic
improvements in prognosis over the years.