It is an estimate of how many people with the same type and same stage of cancer will be alive after a specific period, usually five years, compared with the general population at large over that time.
We often hear people invoke the terms “survival rate” and “relative survival rate” interchangeably.
They are not the same thing.
Prostate Cancer Survival Rate – the percentage of men diagnosed with prostate cancer who will survive for five years.
Prostate Cancer Relative Survival Rate – compares the five-year death rate of men with prostate cancer to the death rate of men over the same period who do not have prostate cancer. A specific age range is often applied in the fine print to a relative survival rate (for prostate cancer usually over 50).
Example: should 97 men of 100 make it to five years, that is a survival rate of 97%. Should the same 97 men (100 minus 3) be compared to another group of 100 men that experienced or were expected to experience three non-prostate cancer deaths, then the prostate cancer group had a relative survival rate of 100 percent.
When consulting the American Cancer Society’s statistics, it is best not to ignore the footnotes about survival rates, specifically:
- These rates apply to the staging done when the cancer was first diagnosed. Recurrences are not part survival rates measured by SEER tracking.
- While the SEER system tracks cancer based on how far it has spread (localized, regional, distant), it does not take in factors like a man’s overall health, his age, and results of PSA, 4Kscore, or other advanced blood testing. In short, your mileage may vary.
- Since the initial diagnoses that determine current survival rates were made more than five years ago, these rates can be expected to be higher for recent diagnoses. This is attributable to technological advancements and medical breakthroughs that have improved both diagnostics and treatment plans.
The American Cancer Society also provides a good example of a blended survival rate. We have all heard versions of “The relative survival rate of prostate cancer is 98%.” But here are specific numbers based on how SEER tracks and stages the disease:
Prostate Cancer: Five-Year Relative Survival Rates – SEER, 2010 – 2016
Localized – cancer confined to prostate — Nearly 100 percent.
Regional – cancer has moved to outside structures or lymph nodes – nearly 100 percent.
Distant – aggressive form of cancer that has spread to organs or to bones – about 30 percent.
Note: the distant cases do not move the survivability numbers significantly because the vast majority of prostate cancer cases in the U.S. (well over 90 percent) are non-lethal and highly treatable forms of the disease.
