• Question: what is the least deadly cancer?

    Asked by tylerk to Amar, Ana, Andrea, Leah, Matt on 17 Mar 2014.
    • Photo: Anastasia Wass

      Anastasia Wass answered on 17 Mar 2014:

      I think skin cancer has the highest cure rate. This is because it’s so easy to spot something going wrong on your skin as you see it all the time.
      Spotting cancer early improves treatment and survival as it usually makes it easier to surgically remove all the tumour.

    • Photo: Amar Joshi

      Amar Joshi answered on 17 Mar 2014:

      Hi tylerk,

      In theory, all cancers can be deadly. Once cancers spread around the body, lots of small tumours grow. They can then affect your organs, progressing the disease and lead to death.

      So looking at it like that, the question is which cancers can we spot early before they spread? Or which cancer grow and spread slowly?

      If tumours grow slowly or cannot spread and these are called benign tumours. They aren’t really cancer so I don’t think they can be counted.

      So which cancer’s can be spotted early? Cancer that are near the surface of your skin can be seen or felt early on. Other cancers in soft tissues too. So skin cancer and breast cancers too.

      An other cancer that could be the ‘least’ deadly are ones where there are good screening programs – like cervical cancer. Women are routine screened for this as it is hard to detect without screening.

    • Photo: Andrea Hanvey

      Andrea Hanvey answered on 17 Mar 2014:

      id say any cancer that has not spread. If a cancer has spread to near by lymph nodes, blood vessels, cavities and organs it is much harder to treat successfully. This also depends on the extent of the spread.

      cancer that has not spread and diagnosed at a lower stage is much more successfully treated.

    • Photo: Leah Fitzsimmons

      Leah Fitzsimmons answered on 17 Mar 2014:

      In 2007, melanoma (skin cancer) and testicular cancer had the best long-term survival rates.
      You could also think of the least deadly cancer as the rarest type of cancer because it affects the fewest people. However, rare types of cancer can often be more difficult to cure than common types because we have less information about them. No one is exactly sure which the rarest type of cancer is but there are several types that are extremely rare.
      Cancer Research UK has a lot of information about which cancers have the best survival rates:
      http://www.cancerresearchuk.org/cancer-info/cancerstats/survival/common-cancers/

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