If you have cancer of any type, it is important to know the prognosis so that you can determine your next action in dealing with it. Prognosis is a medical way of interpreting the outcome of a certain type of cancer by basing it through statistics. It provides a better picture of the survival rate, death rate, the seriousness of the situation, the treatments that can be administered and other relevant this you need to know about.
To be able to come up with a prognosis for cancer, the doctor would need a lot of information such as where the cancer cells are, at which stage is it already at (stages I and II usually are easier to be treated, at stage four, the cancer is most likely already terminal), the grade of the cancer cells (a grade of 7 and lower is more favorable), treatments being administered to the patient, the patient's age and over-all physical condition (patients with more complications are more likely to respond poorly to treatments).
Once all of these are determined, the doctor will come up with statistics based on facts gathered by oncologists in the pursuit of cancer. The statistics commonly used are the five-year survival rate, or the measure of how many people survived within five yours with or without the disease; survival rate, which is the percentage of the people diagnosed with cancer who were able to live within the next five years; and the disease-free survival rate or the amount of time that a person lives without being diagnosed with any of the types of cancer.
A prognosis for cancer will help you picture your situation a bit clearer; however, it will not give an actual outcome because it is mainly an inference made by the doctor. The definite result may still vary because no one is really capable of knowing that.
by Melissa McKyler
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