Statistics and outlook for breast 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
• The overall outlook
• The grade of your cancer
• Outlook by stage and grade
• DCIS
• Small, early breast cancers
• Breast cancers that are larger or have spread to nearby lymph nodes
• Breast cancer that has spread
• How reliable these statistics are
• Clinical trials for breast cancer treatments

This page contains quite detailed information about the survival rates for different stages of breast 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 UK national statistics are available for different stages of cancer or treatments that people may have had. The statistics presented 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 provide 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 with detailed explanations about the different types of 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 that 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 to 15 years or more after treatment in breast cancer research studies. This is because there is only a small chance that a cancer will come back more than 10 years after treatment. Doctors do not like to say these people are cured because there is that small chance. So they use the term ‘10 year survival’ instead.

Statistics can be very difficult to get. We've tried to show them so that they are easy to follow. But unfortunately, some are 5 year survival figures and some are 10 year survival figures. We've said which is which, so please do check which you are looking at.

As with many other types of cancer, the outcome for breast cancer depends on how advanced it is when it is diagnosed. In other words, the stage of your cancer. Overall, in England and Wales, 80 out of every 100 people diagnosed with breast cancer live for at least 5 years after diagnosis. About 72 out of every 100 people live for at least 10 years. The figures for Scotland are very similar.

It takes time to gather statistics and put them together. Doctors monitor women with breast cancer for many years. So the cancer statistics you see always relate to people diagnosed and treated some time ago. The outlook for breast cancer continues to improve. So it is important to bear in mind that figures for women treated more recently may be better.

Researchers have recently predicted survival rates so that we have more up to date figures. The first of these predictions were released in October 2005. They predict that 64 out of every 100 women diagnosed recently with breast cancer (64%) will live for at least 20 years. There is more about these predicted survival rates in our breast cancer question and answer section.

If breast cancer is going to come back, it is most likely to do so within the first 2 years. With some other types of cancer, you are likely to be cured if your cancer has not come back within 5 years. Unfortunately, breast cancer can come back 10 or 20 years after you were first diagnosed. But, this is not common and it is still true that the more time that passes since your diagnosis, the less likely it is that your cancer will come back.

The number of women dying from breast cancer has gone down significantly in the last 20 years in the UK. This is probably for a number of reasons. In particular, the UK breast screening programme is picking up breast cancer earlier and treatments continue to improve. Overall, for women whose breast cancers were picked up during screening, 93 out of every 100 (93%) lived for at least 5 years after their diagnosis. And 88 out of every 100 (88%) lived for at least 10 years after their diagnosis.

We know that the outlook for your cancer depends on how early it is diagnosed - its stage. But it also depends on something called the 'grade' of your cancer. The grade means the appearance of the cancer cells under a microscope. When your breast cancer is biopsied or removed, the tissue is sent to the lab where a pathologist looks at the cells and decides what grade they are. The more like normal breast cells they look, the lower the grade. And the more abnormal they look, the higher the grade.

For breast cancer, there are 3 grades, called grade 1 (low grade), grade 2 (intermediate grade) and grade 3 (high grade). This is important because high grade cancers may be faster growing and more likely to spread. So doctors take the grade into account to help decide on the best treatment for you. There is more about breast cancer grade in our question and answer section.

Doctors can work out the likely outcome (prognosis) for breast cancer using something called the Nottingham Prognostic Index (NPI). The index uses stage and grade. It doesn't include DCIS. Some doctors also use online computer programmes (such as adjuvant! online) to help them make decisions about the risks and benefits of particular treatments for individual people after surgery (adjuvant treatment).

DCIS means ductal carcinoma in situ and the cancer cells are trapped inside the ducts of the breast. So there is very little risk of the cancer cells spreading. So if you are diagnosed with DCIS and treated, you will almost certainly be cured.

The earlier a breast cancer is diagnosed, the smaller it is likely to be and the lower the chance that it has spread. For breast cancers less than 2cm across, with no cancer in the lymph nodes and either low or intermediate grade (grade 1 or 2), between 8 and 9 out of every 10 women (80 to 90%) will live for at least 10 years after diagnosis.

For early breast cancers less than 2cm across, with no cancer in the lymph nodes, but where the cancer cells are high grade (grade 3), between 7 and 8 out of every 10 women (70 to 80%) will live for at least 10 years after diagnosis.

It gets more complicated here. Between 7 and 8 out of every 10 women (70 to 80%) in the following situations live for at least 10 years after diagnosis

• A cancer smaller than 2cm, low grade, with cancer in 4 or more lymph nodes
• A cancer smaller than 2cm, intermediate grade, with cancer in 1, 2 or 3 lymph nodes
• Cancer between 2 and 7cm, low grade, with cancer in 1, 2, or 3 lymph nodes
• Cancer between 2 and 7cm, intermediate grade, with no cancer in the lymph nodes

Between 5 and 7 women out of every 10 (50 to 70%) in these situations live for at least 10 years after diagnosis

• A cancer smaller than 2cm, intermediate grade, with cancer in 4 or more lymph nodes
• A cancer smaller than 2cm, high grade, with cancer in 1, 2 or 3 lymph nodes
• Cancer between 2 and 7cm, low grade, with cancer in 4 or more lymph nodes
• Cancer between 2 and 7cm, intermediate grade, with cancer in 1, 2 or 3 lymph nodes

Between 3 and 5 women out of every 10 (30 to 50%) in these situations live for at least 10 years after diagnosis

• Cancer between 2 and 7cm, intermediate grade, with cancer in 4 or more lymph nodes
• Cancer between 2 and 7cm, high grade, with cancer in 1, 2 or 3 nodes
• Any size cancer in the breast, high grade, with cancer in 4 or more lymph nodes

In about 1 in 20 women (5%), the cancer has already spread to another part of their body when they are first diagnosed. Sadly, the outlook once a cancer has spread to another body organ is not so good. It is not curable at this point, but may be controlled with treatment for some years. About 1 in 5 women (23%) live for at least five years after their diagnosis. But only about 1 in 10 women (10%) will live for more than 10 years.

No statistics can tell you what will happen to you. Your cancer is unique. The same type of cancer can grow at different rates in different people.

The statistics available are not detailed enough to tell you about the different treatments people may have had. And how that treatment worked for them. Many individual factors will determine your treatment and prognosis. For breast cancer, there are more and more tests that specialists take into account both to decide your treatment and to estimate how well it will work.

There is detailed information about clinical trials in CancerHelp UK. You can search our clinical trials database for trials for breast cancer. Pick 'breast' from the drop down menu of cancer types.