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Asked by mariam236 to Amar, Ana, Andrea, Leah, Matt on 11 Mar 2014. This question was also asked by jackattack369027, , sophieb, , .
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Matthew Lam answered on 11 Mar 2014:
I’m afraid I don’t know that off the top of my head! The success/failure rate for cancer treatment will most definitely vary from cancer to cancer.
Breast cancer patients have a number of successful treatments available including drugs you may have heard of such as Tamoxifen and Herceptin. However, these drugs only work on a specific type of breast cancer so can’t be given to all breast cancer patients. These is also a type of breast cancer called ‘triple negative breast cancer’. We currently don’t have any treatments such as tamoxifen or herceptin for this type of breast cancer so these patients have a lower survival rate.
There are also major issues with cancer treatments because patients can become resistant to them over time. This is because the cancer cells evolve under the pressure of being attacked by the drug. Cancer cells that can’t be killed by the treatment then survive and are able to grow into a tumour that is resistant to treatment.
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Anastasia Wass answered on 11 Mar 2014:
This varies depending on which cancer you look at!
In general the sooner you detect a cancer the more effective the treatment as surgery can often remove the whole tumour if detected early enough. Where the tumours located can also effect the success, if you have a brain tumour there’s a higher failure rate for treatment as we have to be careful when performing brain surgery and its also dangerous to target too much chemotherapy drugs or radiation at someones brain! -
Andrea Hanvey answered on 11 Mar 2014:
Depends what cancer you are looking at. Some cancers for instance ovarian cancer is thought of as a silent killer as patients don’t often present with symptoms until the cancer is quite far advanced. This means that the treatment may not be as successful but that’s because of the cancer being detected quite late.
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Amar Joshi answered on 11 Mar 2014:
I’m not sure if you are asking about sucess/failure of drugs or of chemo/surgery so I have answered both…..
It is really hard to tell you this as most cancer treatments have been worked on by companies up to now. Companies don’t like to reveal when their treatments don’t work as it makes them look bad. But it cost almost £1billion to get a drug to market and a lot of that is taken up in the cost of failed drugs.
In terms of treatment, the sucess and failure depends on the type of treatment and the stage of cancer. For example, surgery removes the main tumor lump, but if the cancer has already spread the treatment won’t be effective. Hope that answers the question you were asking.
Comments
mariam236 commented on :
Thank you