Survivorship and Support at UTMB Health

About Cancer Survivorship

After a cancer diagnosis, a person's priorities regarding relationships, career or lifestyle may change. Some people with a history of cancer, often called cancer survivors or survivors, say that they appreciate life more and have gained a greater acceptance of self. At the same time, some survivors also become anxious about their health and uncertain of how to cope with life after treatment, especially when regular visits to doctors stop.

Defining Survivorship

Surviving cancer or “survivorship” can be defined in different ways. Two common definitions include:

• Having no disease after the completion of treatment
• The process of living with, through and beyond cancer

By this definition, cancer survivorship begins at diagnosis. It includes people who continue to have treatment to either reduce risk of recurrence or to manage chronic disease. Sometimes, doctors and nurses use terms to describe the specific period a survivor is experiencing. These can include:

• Acute survivorship: describes the time when a person is being diagnosed and/or in treatment for cancer
• Extended survivorship: describes the time immediately after treatment is completed, usually measured in months
• Permanent survivorship: describes a longer period, often meaning that the passage of time since treatment is measured in years

Sometimes, people who have survived cancer consider their close friends and families “co-survivors” because of the experiences they have had in caring for the person with cancer. Others with metastatic cancer don’t feel that the “survivor” label applies to them because they continue to live with cancer every day. No matter how it is defined, survivorship is unique for each person.

Survival Statistics

• A new study from the American Cancer Society reports that the number of women who died from breast cancer dropped about 40% in the past 25 years, which translates into more than 322,000 lives saved during that time period.
• The average 5-year survival rate for women with non-metastatic invasive breast cancer is 91%. The average 10-year survival rate for women with invasive breast cancer is 84%. If the invasive cancer is located only in the breast, the 5-year survival rate of women with breast cancer is 99%.
• It is important to note that these statistics are averages, and each person’s chance of recovery depends on many factors, including the size of the tumor, the number of lymph nodes that contain cancer, and other features of the tumor that affect how quickly a tumor will grow and how well treatment works.
• The declines in breast cancer mortality rates since 1989 have been attributed to both improvements in treatment and early detection by mammography.