Statistics and outlook for mesothelioma
This page is about statistics and what they can tell us about the outlook for people with mesothelioma. There are sections about
Statistics and outlook for mesothelioma
Outlook means your chances of getting better. Your doctor may call this your prognosis. Below we have quite detailed information about the likely outcome of mesothelioma. The statistics we use are taken from a variety of sources, including the opinions and experience of the experts who check every section of CancerHelp UK. They are intended as a general guide only. For a more complete picture in your case, you’d have to speak to your own specialist.
We include statistics because people ask for them, but not everyone wishes to read this type of information. Remember you can skip this page if you don't want to read it, you can always come back to it.
How reliable are cancer statistics?
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 cannot tell you about the different treatments people may have had, or how that treatment may have affected their prognosis. There are many individual factors that will affect your treatment and your outlook.
Following on this page, is quite detailed information about the survival rates for different stages of mesothelioma. 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 that there are no national statistics 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 that 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 be regarded as any more than that.
Doctors collect statistical information about different types of cancer and prognosis. Prognosis is the likely outcome of your disease and treatment. In other words, your chances of getting better and how long you are likely to live.
Remember that statistics are averages based on large numbers of patients. They cannot predict exactly what will happen to you. No patients are exactly alike and the response to treatment also varies from one person to another.
There is a section explaining more about the different types of cancer statistics in the CancerHelp UK section on cancer statistics. Unless you are very familiar with medical statistics, you may find it helpful to read this before you read the information below.
You should feel free to ask your doctor about your prognosis, but not even your doctor can tell you for sure what will happen. Your doctor may use the term '1, 2, or 5 year survival'. This relates to the proportion of people in research studies who were still alive 1, 2, or 5 years after diagnosis. This is because doctors follow what happens to people for several years after treatment in any research study.
Generally speaking, with cancer the outcome depends on how advanced your cancer is when it is diagnosed and the statistics are given for each stage. Finding statistics by stage is difficult for mesothelioma because
- Mesothelioma is not very common, (although rates are increasing)
- It is usually diagnosed when it is advanced - people may not have symptoms early on and so don't go to their doctor
- Statistics by stage aren't readily available because many people don't have surgery and accurate staging needs an operation
There are 2 types of mesothelioma. Pleural mesothelioma has 3 different staging systems and peritoneal mesothelioma has no established staging system.
Overall, both types of mesothelioma have a poor outlook. By the time someone has symptoms and goes to their doctor, the disease is very often advanced. Because few people are diagnosed early, there are no reliable statistics for 5 year survival rates for the early stages of mesothelioma.
For both types of mesothelioma, patients are often told that they may have about a year to live. But mesothelioma specialists, working in leading cancer centres throughout the world, often report better statistics than this based on clinical trials that they are carrying out. People who can have the mesothelioma surgically removed tend to do better than people who can't have surgery. Some studies seem to show that having radiotherapy, chemotherapy or biological therapies after surgery may increase survival by a few weeks for some people. But research is continuing to try to improve survival for mesothelioma.
Generally, of all the people diagnosed with mesothelioma, about 4 out of 10 (40%) will be alive 1 year later. About 2 out of 10 people (20%) will be alive 2 years later. Only about 1 in 10 (10%) will be alive 3 years later and about 8 out of 100 (8%) will be alive 5 years later. For people who have been diagnosed and treated in the earlier stages of the disease, there is very little information to draw on but some reports quote survival rates of up to 1 in 2 (50%) after 2 years. So the range of survival times is very wide. It is important to remember that survival depends on other factors as well as stage.
Apart from the stage of your cancer, other factors can affect your prognosis. One factor is the type of mesothelioma. People with the epithelial type tend to do better than people with mixed type. The sarcomatous and desmoplastic types can be more difficult to treat and tend to have poorer survival than the other types.
Another factor is how well you are overall. Doctors have a way of measuring this. They call it your 'performance status' or PS. A score of 0 means you are completely able to look after yourself. A score of 1 means you can do most things for yourself, but need some help. The scores continue to go up, depending on how much help you need. This is relevant to survival because overall, the fitter people are, the better able they are to withstand their cancer and treatment.
People with normal haemoglobin levels, and normal white blood cell and platelet counts, tend to do better. These tests are a measure of your overall health and the effect the mesothelioma is having on you.
No statistics can tell you exactly what will happen to you. Your cancer is unique. The same type of cancer can grow at different rates in different people for example.
Statistics are not detailed enough to tell you about the different treatments people may have had. And how that treatment may have affected their prognosis. Chemotherapy, surgery and radiotherapy may help people to live longer as well as relieving symptoms. There are many individual factors that will determine your treatment and prognosis. If you are fit enough to have treatment, you are likely to do better than average, particularly if your cancer is more advanced.
It is important to remember that these statistics are collected from patients treated at least several years ago. Improvements in treatment since then mean that the survival statistics for people now being diagnosed with mesothelioma may be higher.
People treated at hospitals 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 than they might if not in a trial - more scans and blood tests, for example. There is detailed information about clinical trials in CancerHelp UK. To search our clinical trials database for trials that are recruiting for mesothelioma, pick 'lung' from the drop down menu of cancer types.
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