Prostate Cancer Survival Rates – a few statistics

The overall survival rate for prostate cancer patients has continued to rise steadily for the last 20 years meaning that today men diagnosed with the disease have a better chance than ever of living to tell the tale.

Survival rates are nearly always given as a ‘Five year survival rate’. This gives the percentage of patients still alive 5 years after the initial diagnosis is made. In the 1970s the overall five year survival rate in England was a mere 31% however by the end of the 1990s this figure had risen to 65%, over double the number.

The chance of survival depends to a large extent on the stage that the cancer has reached at the time of diagnosis. For example, in England the overall 5 year survival rate for stage 1 and 2 cancers (those still confined to the prostate gland) are around 70% however for stage 4 prostate cancer in which there are distant bone metastases and other deposits the 5 years survival rate falls to a miserable 20%. Thus it is extremely important to diagnose prostate cancer at the earliest possible stage.

Age also plays a part in survival rate however surprisingly men diagnosed between the ages of 60-69 are more likely to reach the 5 year mark than any other age group. This may be because routine screening becomes part of a man’s life in his 60s or because men at this age are less embarrassed about going to their doctor with bladder problems.

Even with the multitude of statistics that are released each year, survival rates still need to be taken with a pinch of salt for a number of reasons. Firstly, they are never up-to-date even though they are technically the latest figures. By the time doctors and specialists have gathered the information for thousands of patients and crunched the numbers into significant statistics some patients will have died, others will have been newly diagnosed and advances in treatment will mean that others are now happily in remission.

The following table shows how survival rates change depending on the age at diagnosis:

The overall 1 Year survival rate (15-89 years of age) is 82% while the overall 5 Year survival rate is only 53%.

This indicates that even with treatment the chances of making a recovery and being fit and healthy 5 years later is still quite low with approximately one in every two men diagnosed having died 5 years later. Treatment does work to prolong life though, regardless of the stage of the cancer. For example, men diagnosed with advanced prostate cancer (stage 4) who under go a course of chemotherapy and possibly radiotherapy have a survival rate of around 24 months however those who decide not to undergo treatment die within 6-9 months maximum.

Secondly, every single case of prostate cancer is different and so using survival rate statistics to determine a specific prognosis is useless. Survival rates are based on information about thousands of cancer sufferers, none of which will have exactly the same characteristics in regard to age, general health, cancer stage, Gleeson score, lifestyle and diet. Survival rates are at best an average outcome that a newly diagnosed person can expect and as such they should not be taken as gospel.

Many survival rate statistics don’t mention whether they are simply showing disease-free survival rates or progression-free survival rates or both together and this can make a big difference when using them to determine a prognosis.

• Disease-free survival rates show the number of people who achieve a state of remission, meaning that there is no longer any sign of cancer within the body.
• Progression-free survival rates however show the number of people who still have the cancer but whose disease isn’t progressing. They may be having treatment to stop growth but the cancer hasn’t completely disappeared.

So the cancer of the prostrate rate of survival over 5 years may be 60% if you take both sets of statistics together but if a patient wants to know their chances of achieving remission 60% would be a very false result and in fact the chances of remission may only be 10%.

The next article in the series talks about when you should and shouldn’t listen to the survival rate statistics and asks do you really want to know them anyway?