Twenty years ago, if my memory serves me well, if you were diagnosed with cancer it seemes to be tantamount to a death sentence. Nowadys, survivor stories abound, what with earlier detection, education and treatment. How far have we progressed in treating cancer? What are the comparative survival rates from 20 years ago.
Hard to come by.
As you see, statistics are not so easily summarized, especially since “cancer” covers a wide range of conditions/qualifications. Statistical sites will say “Cancer A survival rates are up, but Cancer B survival rates are down”, and most of the web-based cancer statistical sites don’t have hard numbers going back 20 years.
Perhaps a medical Doper can provide a link to something more helpful…
In general, there has been headway on several cancers that used to be tough to beat. Pediatric leukemias (especially acute lymphocytic leukemia or ALL), chronic myelogenous leukemia (CML) and late-stage breast cancer come to mind – there is now reasonable approaches to treating those diseases where there never was before. There were big breakthroughs in the treatment of pediatric ALL about 20 years ago. With the other two, there have been big drug discoveries in the past 6 or 7 years (Herceptin and others for breast, Gleevec for CML). Before 20 years ago, the approach to treating some cancers like testicular cancer and Hodgkin’s lymphoma was reasonably successful; it has only improved.
That said, most cancer are still very tough. There is improved detection for things like breast and prostate cancer, but others like lung, pancreas, and ovarian present late and are generally not amenable to population-wide screening protocols. Any cancer with metastases, apart from a few exceptions, is very difficult to beat. The first line of the vast majority of cancer treatments is to blast them with radiation or try to kill them with large doses of chemotherapy. These are difficult, non-targeted treatments which have a wide range of success from abyssmal to pretty good.
Also, cancer is still primarily a disease of aging, and most treatments are still very tough and difficult for the elderly to get through. What can be said is there is an enormous amount of research going on, which is leading us in very interesting directions. We are closer than ever to having targeted treatments tailored to patients and their cancers
There have also been huge advances in testing, which is what I do for a living. Molecular testing is important now for many types of cancer. We test for a variety of leukemias, lymphomas, and sarcomas in our lab. Specific DNA rearrangements have been, and continue to be, found to be associated with different types of cancers, and testing for these rearrangements can help doctors figure out the best way to treat their patients.
As an aside as a kid cancer was just simply “cancer” it was something relatives or someone got and they were going to die, and then they did.
It seems like you started hearing more and more about “testicular cancer,” “breast cancer”, “lung cancer”, et cetera on TV and such in the mid 80s. Before then cancer was just generalized as cancer on most news media (and I watched a lot of TV then!)
It depends on the type of cancer and how advanced it is. While lung cancer in general is more aggressive than cervical cancer, a patient with advanced cervical cancer may have a worse prognosis than someone with a tiny Small Cell Carcinoma of the lung.
Even cancer affecting the same area can have a different prognosis depending on the type. Many old people will have a squamous cell carcinoma of the face that is easily removed and treated, however a malignant melanoma carries a much worse prognosis, even though it’s also a type of skin cancer.
Early cervical cancer and some forms of testicular cancer have 5 year survival rates of up to 90%. Gall bladder cancer would be nearer the 5% mark.
Prostate cancer is common (99% of 99 year old men will have some present), age-related and slow-growing, in many cases something else (heart attack, stroke etc) would kill you before the cancer in the prostate did. Obviously, some men aren’t so lucky and have advanced or terminal prostate cancer in their 40s, 50s and 60s.
Since cancer “cure” is measured in 5 year survival, it can be a little confusing. It means that the cancer could still come back in 7 years after your first diagnosis and kill you, but that at 5 years you have an X% chance of not having been killed by it.
There are new cancers being discovered, too.
My dad broke every survival statistic for lung cancer. He was diagnosed in '97; we know from my sister in law (who is a doctor) that the survival rate was “5 out of 1000” survive the first year (yes, three zeros). Lasted 3 years.
Funny thing, his case was published and it appears to be the first known case of a cancer that didn’t start with a solid tumor in the lung but with loose cancerous cells in the pleural fluid. I just wish the idiot had found something else to be the first at :rolleyes: You know, something that didn’t involve 3 years of chemo and radiotherapy?
We sometimes say that he died of the kidding. He used to kid that “if that line about each cigarrette taking five minutes out of your life was true, I’d be dead already.” His brothers are all older than he ever got to be; only one used to be a smoker and he smoked pipe (so never as much as someone who smokes cigarrettes).
Self-exploration, echograms and mamograms have done wonders about breast cancer in women; marrow donation (please donate, thanks) has done wonders for leukemia. At this rate we’ll all manage to die from Old Age like people used to 
Nava, I’m sorry for your loss.
But it’s funny, people used to die of “Old Age” in their 60s and 70s, now everyone wants to make it to their 90s and still be healthy in body and mind. Seing as how 20% of the over 80s have dementia, and at the moment we can do very little about it, I don’t think that is as achievable as people think.
irishgirl
It is very true. My grandfather was diagnosed in November with acute myelogenous leukemia at age 80. We live near a large cancer center, and he was accepted into a study specifically tailored for sept- and octogenarians. We contacted other hospitals, and apparently, he would have been eligible for standard care at those places as well (araC plus idarubicin). Unfortunately, a high-functioning 80 year old can quickly turn into an 80 year old with multiple organ failures and infections after a bout of aggressive chemotherapy. He passed away a month after diagnosis.
But these patients are actively treated and many do get better. Considering that my grandfather was 80 with little past medical history and no major medical problems, he (and we all) thought it was best to at least give it one aggressive go. It wasn’t necessarily easy, but he went out fighting and I think that’s the way he would have wanted. That, and he was kept as comfortable as possible through the whole thing.