Colon Cancer Survival Rate

Published on Apr 09 2010, in the categories: Survival Statistics

Colon cancer is a disease that affects the area of the colon and evolves in the individual body until it reaches the last stage, stage in which the cancer is already spread to other parts of the body. Like in the case of colon cancer treatment, the survival rates are different depending on the patients’ stage of the disease at the time of diagnoses.

Of course, the chances of cure and survival rates are higher if colon cancer is diagnosed in the earliest stages when the disease is actually very easy to cure through surgery removal of the cancerous tumors, while in the last stages, colon cancer is one of the most difficult to cure diseases. The cancer is in most cases diagnosed in the last stages because of the lack of symptoms, and this is how the fact that colon cancer is a main cause in cancer related deaths is explained.

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Colon cancer survival rates depend on the stage in which the disease is diagnosed. Colon cancer has got five stages of evolution, zero being the first one and four the last and most advanced one. In stage zero the chances of cure are higher than 90 percent. In stage one, they can be placed between 80 and 95 percent, while in stage two the first drop of the survival rates can be seen. In stage two only 55 to 80 percent of all those diagnosed with this disease survive after five years from the diagnoses moment. In stage three and four, the last stages of colon cancer the hope to be cured are the lowest one.

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In these stages the cancer spread into the individual body and it affects other organs. The main difference between stage three and stage four is that in stage three the cancer affects only nearby tissues and in stage four it can affect organs such as the liver or the lungs, which are not in the immediate close of the colon. In stage three the survival rates are at bout 40 percent and in stage four they are only at 10 percent. Some statistics are even more pessimistic and show that 8 to 10 percent of those diagnosed with colon cancer last stage die because of it. In some cases less than 7% of stage four patients will survive to 5 years, because of the metastases that tumor has created to other organs. In fact the number of metastasis and their exact location is a factor in establishing the chances of cure of one patient. The metastatic phase of the disease has the worst colon cancer survival rates.

The general colon cancer survival rates in America are at about 62 percent and in Europe at 42 percent.
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