What is Cancer Prognosis Explained by Dr Ajay Chanakya Vallabhaneni
Cancer is a disease that comes in various forms. It might just be mild or might be the most severe. How to know? It is through prognosis that you can know and understand the mildness or severity of your disease.
A prognosis can tell you
- How long you will live in case cancer is not curable?
- What is the severity of cancer in your body?
- Will you recover completely?
- Upto what extent you are curable?
You must be wondering how the prognosis done.
Cancer survival rates are based on gathering thousands of people’s information with a specific cancer. The overall survival rate includes all ages and health conditions cancer people who are diagnosed very early to those diagnosed very late.
When you are diagnosed with cancer your doctor estimates the prognosis of it based on the research and past studies. Prognosis is not done just like that; it depends on various factors.
- Your age and well being,
- The type of cancer you have,
- The stage of cancer you are in,
- The grade if cancer, and
- The most importantly how your body is reacting to the cancer treatment.
The difference between cure and remission
After the treatment, if there are no tracers of your cancer and if it never comes back then it’s called a cure.
Whereas remission means that the cancer signs and symptoms are reduced. The remission can be partial or complete. All cancer signs and symptoms disappear in complete remission.
If the complete remission remains for over 5 years, you may still get cured. Some cancer cells may remain in your body over a period of time after treatment, and these may cause cancer to come back one day.
Most of the cancers that return happens in the first 5 years after treatment but there are chances of coming back later also.
Hence, we doctors can’t say if you are cured for sure and just be sure of no signs of cancer at this time.
As the chances of cancer coming back we doctors have to monitor you for years and conduct tests to look for the signs of cancer returning. This includes the signs of late side effects from the cancer treatments you received.
Your cancer specialist may utilize endurance measurements to give more data about your visualization. Many examinations consider talking around long term endurance.
This is on the grounds that they take a gander at the number of individuals alive 5 or 10 years after a cancer treatment. A few groups will live any longer than this.
A prognosis done by the doctor is just an estimation and that doesn’t remain constant. The level of estimation about your life and cure might change according to time and new research.
So, it is just a blunt idea about how long a cancer patient might survive, to what extent can his treatment be done and what is the maximum he can do in order to live more and a good life.
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