Breast cancer survival rates by stage

Breast cancer survival rates by stage

Survival rates are often used by doctors as a standard way of discussing a person's
prognosis (outlook). Some patients with breast cancer may want to know the survival
statistics for people in similar situations, while others may not find the numbers helpful,
or may even not want to know them. If you decide that you do not want to read them,
skip to the next section.
The 5-year survival rate refers to the percentage of patients who live at least 5 years after
being diagnosed with cancer. Many of these patients live much longer than 5 years after
diagnosis. Also, people diagnosed with cancer can die from other things. These numbers,
sometimes called observed survival, do not take into account the fact that some of the
deaths are from causes other than breast cancer.
In order to get 5-year survival rates, doctors have to look at people who were treated at
least 5 years ago. Improvements in treatment since then may result in a more favorable
outlook for people now being diagnosed with breast cancer.
Survival rates are often based on previous outcomes of large numbers of people who had
the disease, but they cannot predict what will happen in any particular person's case.
Many other factors may affect a person's outlook, such as your age and health and the
presence of hormone receptors on the cancer cells. Your doctor can tell you how the
numbers below may apply to you, as he or she is familiar with the aspects of your
particular situation.

The available statistics do not divide survival rates by all of the substages, such as IA and
IB. The rates for these substages are likely to be close to the rate for the overall stage. For
example, the survival rate for stage IA is likely to be slightly higher than that listed for
stage I, while the survival rate for stage IB would be expected to be slightly lower.