Staging And Prognosis In Colon Cancer

Published on Apr 12 2010, in the categories: Stages of disease

There are many things which can influence the prognosis of colon cancer for an individual. The most important ones are the stages of the disease and the exact locations of the metastases created by it. Other factor may regard the patient general health and its age, but also the way he reacts to the treatment and drugs administrated.



Staging and prognosis in colon cancer are made by doctors using different medical tests. If the stage of the disease is established through CT or PET scans the prognosis is made by the doctor using statistics and patients evolutions in similar cases. If the stage can be established certainly, we can not say the same thing about prognosis. Nothing can be certain about them and no one can say for sure how the cancer is going to evolve and if you can be cured or not.

The survival rates are established with references at the five years term. The general survival rate is at about 64 percent of all those being diagnosed with this cancer type. This means that after five years form the time of diagnoses, 64 percent of all patients still lived. Almost 36 percent did nor survive the disease. Men tend to be more affected by colon cancer than women, but the differences are very low.

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But if we refer at staging and prognosis in colon cancer patients we will see that the numbers are different depending on the stage of the disease. In stage one about 39 percent of all colon cancer cases are diagnosed and from those people 90.4 percent survive. In stage two 37 percent of the patients discover the disease and 80 percent survive it. Because of the lack of symptoms in the earliest stages, colon cancer is often diagnosed in stages three and four. In stage three 9 percent of those who developed colon cancer are being diagnosed and 40 percent win the fight with the disease, while in stage four only 5 percent of the cases are discovered and 10 percent survive the disease.

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When we start talking about the most advanced stages, unfortunately, the chances of cure are very low and so the survival rates and prognosis. Even if treatments have improved and so medical interventions for colon cancer, the chances to survive an advanced stage are still low. This happens because the cancer spreads into the body and creates secondary tumors on other organs. People need to know how their disease is going to evolve and how much they are going to live. Unfortunately no one can tell them that precisely. Some can survive colon cancer even if it has spread, while other can react badly to treatment in the first stages. Doctors can not know if the tumors with withdraw with chemotherapy or not.

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