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Mesothelioma Prognosis
Doctors collect statistical
information about the different types of cancer and prognosis. Prognosis
is the likely outcome of your disease and treatment. In other words,
your chances of getting better and how long you are likely to live.
Following on this page, is quite detailed information about the survival
rates of different stages of mesothelioma. We have included it because
many people have asked us for this. But not everyone who is diagnosed
with a cancer wishes to read this type of information. If you are not
sure whether you want to know at the moment or not, then perhaps you
might like to skip this page for now. You can always come back to it.
Please note: There are no national
statistics available for different stages of cancer or treatments that
people may have received. The statistics we present here are pulled
together from a variety of different sources, including the opinions and
experience of the experts that check each section of CancerHelp UK. We
provide statistics because people ask us for them. But they are only
intended as a general guide and cannot be regarded as any more than
that.
There is a section explaining more about the different types of cancer
statistics in the CancerHelp UK section on cancer statistics. Unless
you are very familiar with medical statistics, you may find it helpful
to read this before you read the information below.
Remember - statistics are averages based on large numbers of patients.
They cannot predict exactly what will happen to you. No patients are
exactly alike and response to treatment also varies from one person to
another.
You should feel free to ask your doctor about your prognosis, but not
even your doctor can tell you for sure what will happen. You may hear
your doctor use the term '5 year survival'. This relates to the
proportion of people in research studies who were still alive 5 years
after diagnosis. This is because doctors follow what happens to people
for 5 years after treatment in any research study.
Generally speaking, with cancer the
outcome depends on how advanced your cancer is when it is diagnosed.
Usually with cancer, the statistics are given for each stage. Stage
is just as important for mesothelioma as it is for other cancers. But
finding the statistics is more difficult to do. This is because
Mesothelioma is not all that common, (although incidence is increasing)
It is usually diagnosed when it is advanced - people may not have symptoms early on and so don't go to the doctor
Statistics by stage aren't readily available because most people don't have surgery and accurate staging needs an operation
There are two types of mesothelioma.
Pleural mesothelioma has three staging systems and peritoneal
mesothelioma has no established staging system.
Overall, both types of mesothelioma have a poor outlook. By the time
someone has symptoms and goes to their doctor, the disease is very
often advanced. Because few people are diagnosed early, there are no
reliable statistics for 5 year survival rates for the early stages of
mesothelioma.
For both types of mesothelioma, patients are often told that they may
have less than a year to live. But mesothelioma specialists, working
in leading cancer centres throughout the world, often report better
statistics than this based on clinical trials that they are carrying
out. Some of these are reported below.
Generally, of all those people diagnosed with mesothelioma only about
1 in 10 (10%) will be alive 3 years later and 1 in 20 (5%) will be
alive 5 years later. For those people who have been diagnosed and
treated in the earlier stages of the disease, there is little
information to draw on. But we have seen reports that quote survival
rates of up to 1 in 2 (50%) after 2 years. So the range of survival
times is very wide. Survival depends on other factors, as well as
stage