“What are my chances of surviving a bone cancer ?”……is the most common question that comes to anyone’s mind who has been recently diagnosed with a bone cancer.
Whenever we talk about survival rate, we talk in terms of 5 year survival rate , which means as to what percentage of patients diagnosed with bone cancer are likely to survive at the end of 5 years.
Survival rate of any bone cancer depends on number of factors like:
Type of bone cancer : Survival rates vary between types of bone cancer. For example : Survival rate for chondrosarcoma is different from osteosarcoma. It even varies between subtypes of bone cancers. For example : survival rates for Dediffrentiated chondrosarcoma is different from a low grade chondrosarcoma
Extent of spread of disease at the time of diagnosis: A localised disease has a better survival than a metastatic (disease which has already spread)
Location of tumour : A sarcoma which can be surgically removed with a cuff of normal tissue all around has a better survival rates than the one which can not be surgically removed, hence, bone cancer in the limbs has a better survival than bone cancer in the spine etc
Disease load / tumour volume : Smaller the size of tumour at the time of diagnosis better are the chances of survival
Response to chemotherapy : For chemosensitive bone cancers, patients who have responded to chemotherapy usually fare better than those who haven’t responded well
Time between the diagnosis and start of treatment : More the time lag, more are chances of increase in tumour load and spread elsewhere and hence worse is the survival rate
Age of the patient : In some bone cancers, younger patients fare better than older counterparts when diagnosed with same type of bone cancer. For example, osteosarcoma occurring in elderly has a worse prognosis than it occurring in children.
Coming to numbers, 5 year survival rate for localised Ewing’s Sarcoma is around 70-75%
Similarly, 5 year bone cancer survival rate treatment in India for localised Osteosarcoma is 65-70% and 5 year survival rate for non metastatic chondrosarcoma is around 80-85 %
Before making any opinion on these numbers, we must understand that these are estimates in which all patients of different ages, socio-economic background, tumour volumes, tumour location etc are clubbed together. So you must discuss with your treating oncologist about the likelihood of survival in your case. Also, if any better treatment has come in recently, it won’t be reflected in these estimates.
Dr Rajat Gupta
Orthopaedic Oncologist
Bone Cancer Clinic
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