The chance of survival of people with cancer has increased again. In 2018, 65 percent of people who had been diagnosed with cancer five years before were still alive. Particularly due to faster diagnoses and better treatments, that percentage is increasing by around 1 percent every year. Does this mean that we will no longer die of cancer in 35 years?
To start with: there are many different types of cancer. Some forms can already be treated properly, provided they are discovered in time and have not yet been sown. That applies, for example, to testicular cancer, skin cancer, breast cancer and prostate cancer, says Otto Visser of the Integrated Cancer Center the Netherlands (IKNL).
With a disease such as pancreatic cancer, symptoms only appear at a later stage, he says. “Then there are almost always metastases. And actually applies to all forms of cancer: if they have already spread to the diagnosis, they are very difficult to treat.”
In such a situation, as a doctor you are mainly concerned with creating longer life expectancy, says Emile Voest, medical director of the Antoni van Leeuwenhoek in Amsterdam. “Then you try to work towards a chronic illness, where both length of life and quality of life are paramount.”
New techniques
In addition, not all types of cancer are known yet about how they work. “For example, pancreatic cancer is a form of which we do not yet understand exactly how biology works,” says Voest. “But five years ago we didn’t know that about melanomas,” he explains.
There, researchers finally achieved success with immunotherapy, a cancer treatment in which the own immune system attacks the cancer cells. That therapy is constantly being expanded. “These kinds of new forms of treatment are promising. But not yet applicable to every patient I see in my doctor’s office. So I want to remain modest in my enthusiasm.”
Below you can see how many percent of people who were diagnosed with cancer in 1990 and 2013 were still alive five years later:
–
