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Asked by evilevo to Tim, Dalya, Sarah on 15 Jun 2011. This question was also asked by zarah246, libya4life, pwrinness.
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Tim Millar answered on 10 Jun 2011:
For cancer, we tend not to talk about cure but disease free survival which are a little bit different. A cure would be a treatment which allows someone to live to their natural average age which is the goal of the treatments. In reality, we often measure survival after diagnosis at 5 years. At that point if a patient is tested and no sign can be seen of the cancer, then they are said to be disease free. Unfortunately, for some people, the tests are not good enough to be able to see if the cancer has completeky gone, they are not sensitive enough. So for some people who are disease free at 5 years, they may still have cancer but it is not detectable. Some of the patients go on to live cancer free and have a full life. For others the cancer returns and they begin treatment again. For all cancer put together, ther survival to 5 years is above 50% or out of every one with cancer more than half will survive for 5 years. This is getting better all the time with new methods of testing, more awareness and more research into cancer, its prevention and drug treatment
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Dalya Soond answered on 11 Jun 2011:
Tim gave an incredibly good and clear answer, so I will not add anything to it.
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Sarah Thomas answered on 15 Jun 2011:
At the moment there isn’t really a be-all and end-all cure for all cancers. But there are a lot of brilliant treatments and therapies out there that have the potenital to keep people “disease free” as Tim said.
Cancer treatment is becoming better all the time and people have started to realise that cancer is a disease that is individual to the patient, and so treatments are becoming more tailored to the individual too.
Huge developments in cancer research have seen cancer survival rates double in the past 40 years, which is amazing! And the continuing hard work of doctors and nurses and scis in this country will hopefully see these stats continue to improve in coming years.
I think the scientific ideal is that one day cancers will be prevented. In recent years we have seen the development of vaccines against certain types of cancers and I think this gives us all great hope for the future!
Another important part of prevention is getting people to live healtheir lifestyles: to stop smoking, drink less alcohol, protect themselves against the sun and eat healthier too.
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