Statistics and outlook for bowel cancer

• A quick guide to what's on this page
• What you need to know about the information on this page
• Cancer statistics in general
• Prognosis by stage
• How reliable are these statistics?
• Clinical trials

This page contains quite detailed information about the survival rates of different stages of bowel cancer. We have included it because many people have asked us for this. But not everyone who is diagnosed with a cancer wants to read this type of information. If you are not sure whether you want to know at the moment or not, then perhaps you might like to skip this page for now. You can always come back to it.

Please note - No national statistics are available for different stages of cancer or treatments that people may have had. The statistics we present here are pulled together from a variety of different sources, including the opinions and experience of the experts who check each section of CancerHelp UK. We give statistics because people ask us for them. But they are only intended as a general guide and cannot tell you about your individual outcome.

There is a section explaining more about cancer statistics in CancerHelp UK and also about incidence, mortality and survival. Unless you are very familiar with medical statistics, it might help to read this before you read the statistics below.

Remember - '5 year survival' and ‘10 year survival’ are terms doctors use. This doesn't mean you will only live 5 or 10 years. 10 year survival relates to the proportion of people in research studies who were still alive 10 years after diagnosis. Doctors follow what happens to people for 10 years or more after treatment in cancer research studies. This is because there is only a small chance that a cancer will come back more than 10 years after treatment. They do not like to say these people are cured because there is that small chance. So they use the term ‘10 year survival’ instead.

As with many other types of cancer, the outcome of colon or rectal cancer depends on how advanced it is when it is diagnosed. In other words, the stage of your cancer.

Of all the people in England and Wales diagnosed with colon or rectal cancer, more than 50 out of every 100 (50%) live for at least 5 years after their diagnosis. Recent estimates show that about 46% of people with rectal cancer and nearly 50% with colon cancer live for at least 10 years. This has improved a lot over the past 20 years. The statistics below relate to people having surgery. About 80% of people with colorectal cancer have surgery intended to cure them. But the cancer comes back in about half of these people.

The links below take you down the page to specific information about the outlook for each stage of bowel cancer. For 34% of people with bowel cancer, the stage is not known at diagnosis.

• Stage 1
• Stage 2
• Stage 3
• Stage 4

Stage 1

Stage 1 bowel cancer is also called Dukes A. This means the cancer is only in the innermost lining of the colon or rectum, or it has spread into the inner muscle layer. As this is a very early stage cancer, it has a high cure rate. After surgery, more than 9 out of 10 patients (90%) will live for more than 5 years. Unfortunately, at the moment less than 10 out of every 100 patients (10%) diagnosed with colorectal cancer have stage 1. As bowel cancer screening is introduced across the UK, it is hoped that more people will have their cancer diagnosed early. 

Stage 2

Stage 2 bowel cancer is also called Dukes B. This means that the cancer has grown through the muscle layer of the bowel wall. About a quarter (24%) of people with colorectal cancer are diagnosed at this stage. Depending on various factors, after surgery more than three quarters (up to 77%) of people with stage 2 colorectal cancer can expect to live longer than 5 years.

Stage 3

Stage 3 bowel cancer is also called Dukes C. This means that the cancer has spread into the lymph nodes surrounding the bowel. Roughly 24 out of every 100 people (24%) with colorectal cancer are diagnosed at this stage. The outcome depends on the number of lymph nodes that contain cancer cells. After surgery, almost half of the people with Stage 3 bowel cancer (48%) will live for at least 5 years after their diagnosis.

Stage 4

Stage 4 bowel cancer is also sometimes called Dukes D. This means that the cancer has spread from the bowel to another part of the body. In roughly 9 out of 100 people (9%) with colorectal cancer, the cancer has already spread to another part of their body when they are diagnosed. For this advanced cancer the survival rates are lower. With this stage, about 6 people out of every 100 (6%) will live for at least 5 years after they are diagnosed.

If the cancer has spread into the liver but the areas in the liver can be removed with surgery, some recent studies have shown 5 year survival rates of 25 to 40%.

No statistics can tell you what will happen to you. Your cancer is unique. So statistics can only give a rough idea of what may happen to you. The available statistics are not detailed enough to tell you about the different treatments people may have had. And how that treatment may have affected their outlook. Some treatments may help people to live longer as well as relieving symptoms. There are many individual factors that will affect your treatment and prognosis.

People treated at centres where clinical trials are taking place tend to do better. This is almost certainly because that is where the most expertise is concentrated - research is more likely to take place in specialist centres. For people in the trials, it may be partly to do with having a closer eye kept on them by their doctors and nurses than they might if not in a trial - for example, more scans and blood tests. There is more about understanding clinical trials in CancerHelp UK. To search our clinical trials database for trials that are recruiting for bowel cancer, choose 'bowel' from the drop down menu of cancer types.