5 year survival rate - Just finished Chemotherapy for Stage III colon cancer

Hi, The 5 year survival rate is an estimate of patients who are alive after 5 year from the time of initial diagnosis. If for example, 100 people are diagnosed with a certain cancer and the 5 year survival rate is 50%, this means that about 50 people are expected to be alive at 5 years. Similar to recurrence rates (which I posted in your other query) the actual estimates would vary based on a number of factors: the extent of disease (there are subclassifications of stage 3, based on number of lymph nodes involved and variations on how deep were the layers of the bowel wall involved in the primary site), his age, the presence of other diseases like heart disease, hypertension, etc.). Since you are only interested in a ball-park figure, and you mentioned neuropathy (this is probably due to Oxaliplatin/Eloxatin, which is a chemotherapeutic drug) the range may vary from: If he is about 60 years old without any other diseases, and with minimal involvement of lymph nodes (1-3 lymph nodes showed cancer): 5 year survival without any chemo is 54%, with the chemo the survival rate improves to 71% If he has more lymph node involvement (more than 10 nodes showed cancer): 5 year survival without any chemo is 5%, with chemo the survival rate improves to 26%. The chemotherapy makes a greater difference when the baseline risk of death is higher. I can provide you more accurate estimates if you can give his age, any other illnesses (and how severe they are, hypertension that is difficult to control? A previous heart attack?) the depth of invasion (this is written in the final histopathology report which is a pathologist’s description of the surgical specimen) and nodes involved (likewise in the report).

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