Lung Cancer - Three Years Cancer Free / Cured? - 1289394

koal
Posts:29

I heard that the marker has changed to three years lung cancer free and you are considered cured.
No longer the five year cancer free to be considered cured from lung cancer.

Is this true?

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JimC
Posts: 2753

Hi koal,

I'm not aware of any change in the standard. Do you have a source to which you can point us so we can check it out? Though the chance of recurrence decreases quite a bit after 2-3 years, the risk is still high enough to consider five years a more reasonable standard.

JimC
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cards7up
Posts: 636

I read and research a lot and have not seen or heard of the change anywhere. This is from the ACS 2014-15.
Take care, Judy

"The 1-year relative survival for all lung cancers combined
increased from 34% in 1975-1977 to 45% in 2006-2009, largely
due to improvements in surgical techniques and combined therapies.
The 5-year survival rate is 54% for cases detected when the
disease is still localized, 26% for patients with regional disease,
and 4% for patients with distant-stage disease (Figure 5, page 7).
The overall 5-year survival for small cell lung cancer (6%) is
lower than that for non-small cell (18%).25"

http://www.cancer.org/acs/groups/content/@research/documents/document/a…