The prognosis for many Canadian cancer survivors tends to improve, sometimes substantially, after they survive a year or more, a new Statistics Canada report suggests.
For the first time, Statistics Canada has estimated survival rates for people who have already lived at least a year with cancer. The risk of death is often greatest in the first year, the agency said, and old prognosis estimates for the years that follow may no longer apply.
"The good news in this story is, for many, many patients, once they have gone for two or three or four years after cancer diagnosis, their survival compared with the general population is really dramatically better than it was at that time they first had that chat with their oncologist," said Dr. Heather Bryant, a co-author of the report and vice-president of cancer control for the Canadian Partnership Against Cancer.
The researchers analyzed data involving patients across the country and 26 different kinds of cancer diagnosed between 2004 and 2006, looking at survival rates at different time periods after diagnosis. The estimates are based on the average survival time for large groups of patients, rather than an individual's prognosis.
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