What is Cancer and How to Survive

Surviving Cancer

If a person is ever diagnosed with a cancer, the doctor will sit them down and describe what is called the "5-year survival rate".  What that rate is can be considered a judge of how severe the cancer is.  On this chart below is a list of many of the more common types of cancer and four columns of survival rates.  These rates give the person an idea of how likely it is that they will be able to survive the next 5 years even though they are diagnosed with a cancer.  Some cancers have great survival rates.  If the rate is 99% that means, 99 out of 100 people who have that cancer should be able to survive at least the next 5 years.  If the rate is 13%, that means only 13 out of 100 people survive that cancer (obviously not so good).

The four columns include the "all stages" survival rate for the cancer.  The the "local" column represent those cancers that have not moved to another tissue.  The "regional" column represents the cancers that start in one tissue and move to a neighboring tissue.  And the "distant" column represents the survival rates for cancers that have moved from one part of the body to a part farther away, also called metastasis.