Could Cancer no longer be an automatic death sentence to those diagnosed?[ALAMY]The reason this 50 per cent figure is an important tipping point is that it’s saying that now half of all patients will survive at least 10 years after a diagnosis and for many it will be very much longer than that.
A “tipping point” has been reached in the war against the disease, says landmark research, meaning many forms of cancer are now chronic conditions rather than a fatal ones.
Huge strides in early diagnosis, more targeted treatments and better prevention mean many sufferers are no more at risk of dying than the general population.
In the 1970s, just a quarter of patients lived for as long as 10 years.
Dr Harpal Kumar, chief executive of Cancer Research UK, which announced the new findings for England and Wales, said: “It’s not very long ago that cancer used to be thought of as a death sentence.
“The reason this 50 per cent figure is an important tipping point is that it’s saying that now half of all patients will survive at least 10 years after a diagnosis and for many it will be very much longer than that.
“I think that does represent a change in the way we should be thinking about cancer.”
Currently, five-year survival is one of the main yardsticks used by clinicians and scientists when assessing cancer outcomes. But Dr Kumar said the latest figures mean a more optimistic approach is justified.
He added: “It’s time now to shift the narrative and to change the language we use and start thinking about 10-year survival.”
The research, which involved analysing data on more than seven million patients diagnosed with cancer since 1971, showed spectacular improvements in survival for some cancers.
Rates of 10-year survival for testicular cancer have jumped from 69 per cent to 98 per cent and for malignant skin cancer from 46 per cent to 89 per cent.
Women with breast cancer now have a 78 per cent chance of surviving at least a decade, compared with 40 per cent in 1971.
Similarly, the proportion of men living 10 years with prostate cancer has jumped from 25 per cent to around 80 per cent.
However the outlook still remains bleak for patients with the deadliest forms of cancer, such as those affecting the lungs, oesophagus, pancreas and brain.
Fewer than five per cent of people diagnosed with lung and pancreatic cancer could expect to live 10 years, and for oesophageal and brain cancers decade-long survival was achieved by no more than 15 per cent of sufferers.
And the UK lags behind comparable European neighbours when it comes to cancer survival, chiefly due to GPs missing symptoms, late diagnosis and less-effective treatments being offered.
Cancer Research UK plans to boost its funding from £350million to around £525million a year over the next five to 10 years in the hope of ensuring three-quarters of cancer patients diagnosed in 20 years time survive at least a decade.
Professor Michel Coleman, head of Cancer Research UK’s Cancer Survival Group, said that technically patients were not being “cured” of cancer.
But when those who survived for 10 years were at no greater risk of death than the population at large “in that sense, it would represent a ‘cure’.”
He said that at that stage cancer “becomes a chronic condition with which people are forced to live but not necessarily would expect to die from”.
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