If you are a woman who has contracted breast cancer that has yet to metastasize you have an average five-year survival rate of about 86%. What this means is that 86% of all women who have contracted breast cancer survive the disease for at least five years. Though that number is extremely high it is merely an overall average. In many categories the numbers are greater, and the survival rates are better. These numbers of course depend on which stage individuals detect their cancer and seek medical treatment.
Just like other forms of cancer, individuals develop breast cancer in stages. Each stage is labeled with both a letter and a number. The cancer types are labeled based on a classification system that has become a cancer standard. These labels are (T, N, and MO and are scaled from 0-IV). A cancer that has been deemed A T is indicative of the cancers size, the N means that the cancer has spread to the individual’s lymph nodes and M means distant metastasis. Metastasis means that a tumor is spreading from its primary location to secondary locations throughout the body forming the same tumor types in other locations.
TX tumors are those that can not yet be assessed at all. T0 designates a situation in which there’s no evidence of the cancer at all. Tis indicates one that may be of type DCIS (ductal carcinoma in situ), LCIS (lobular carcinoma in situ) or Paget’s disease (a rare form in which the nipple and/or areola is cancerous).
Cancers in Stage 0 are in the earliest possible stage. In cancers that are Stage I, the tumors are fewer than 2cm in size and have yet to spread. Stage II cancer means that a tumor has grown to 2-5cm in diameter, and Stage III tumors are larger than 5cm. If an individual has a tumor that is stage IV then it is attached to the chest wall, and has typically spread to the individual’s lymph nodes.
Because of the advances in diagnosis and treatment techniques many individuals are able to catch their cancer and eliminate it in the earliest stages.
For women and men who are treated while their cancer is in Stage 0 or Stage I the chances of an individual surviving for five years is about 100%. Men are also capable of contracting breast cancer; the rate at which men can contract the disease is much less than women. Individuals suffering with Stage II cancers have survival rates ranging between 81% and 92%. The survival rate doesn’t dip until you get to Stage III at which point the rate is around 67%. If an individual has Stage IV cancer it is about 20%.
It is always possible for men and women to beat the odds that are against them. Even individuals who are in their later stages of cancer are capable of surviving for even lengthier periods than expected, even more than seven years. Because of the technological advances in both diagnostic methods and treatment techniques individual’s odds are significantly improving.
One new method of diagnosis is the QM-MSP (quantitative multiplex metylation-specific PCR). This technique was discovered in 2001. It is a chemical test that draws fluid from the breast in question. The fluid is then analyzed for certain chemicals attached to certain genes. Cancer clumps that contain as few as 50 cells are capable of being detected with an 86% rate of accuracy. These new methods make the detection of cancer simple, thus improving the chances that an individual’s treatment will be successful.
Treatments are improving, too. Hormone therapy, targeted radiation, molecule specific drugs and other contemporary techniques constitute the cutting edge, where once there was only cutting.
Though never pleasant, and still a serious condition, breast cancer no longer has to be life threatening or even permanently scarring.