Colon Cancer Survivability

Colon cancer survivability depends of the time of detection of the cancer. According to statistics, colon cancer is one of the deadliest cancers in the world today. In fact, it is the second leading cause of cancer related deaths. Because of this, governments and health organizations have done many things to increase public awareness, reduce the incidences of colon cancer, or even reduce the events of bad colon cancer prognosis.

When it is diagnosed, the colon cancer survivability highly depends on the stage where the cancer is in. This is why when it comes to colon cancer, or any cancer for that matter, early detection is important. The earlier it is detected, the better the colon cancer prognosis. However, when talking about prevention, detection, and treatment, the one that gives out great colon cancer survivability is prevention as it stops the disease from happening way before it has even set foot in your body.

As have been said, colon cancer survivability and cancer prognosis depends heavily on its stage. You may or may not have heard about the stages of cancer so to give you more information, here are the facts.

Stage I

In this stage, there is invasion of the cancer cells in the submucosa of the intestinal walls. ‘Submucosa’ is the medical term for the layer slightly below the surface of a tissue. If the cancer has gone a bit deeper in this stage, it has reached the muscle wall of the tissue. Because it is still in stage one, the cancer has not affected any lymph node or has spread to other tissue sites. Since the cancer cells still have not caused any real damage apart from the mucosal wall of the tissue, the prognosis made in this stage is more than 5 years of survival. As a matter of fact, greater than 90% of those diagnosed in this stage survived for more than 5 years.

Stage II

If in the earlier stage the damage is very small, in this stage it has become a bit serious. Aside from causing damage to the entire tissue site where the cancer cells originated, other neighboring tissue sites also bear evidence of damage. Still, there is no metastasis or harm to any lymph node happening in this stage. However, the 5-year survival rate has dropped to 70 to 85%.

Stage III

In this stage, definite and bigger damage to the tissue is evident. There is also now involvement of one to three lymph nodes. Because of this, metastasis may or may not happen. As for the prognosis, the 5 year survival rate has dropped from as high as 55% to as low as 20% depending on how badly the primary tissue site and affected lymph nodes have been damaged. Even if there is no metastasis happening in this point, there is a high possibility that it will develop later on. Why? With the cancer cells affecting the lymph nodes, they now have the means to travel to other areas of the body and not just stay in one place. Because of this, stage III colon cancer has a large possibility of developing into stage IV. This is also the reason why the prognosis in this stage is considerably low.

Stage IV

Many believe that this stage is the “hopeless stage”. Aside from creating great damage to the original tissue site, four or more lymph nodes are also affected. Because of the fact that cancer cells use the lymph nodes as one of its major “transportation” to other tissue sites, it is expected that distant metastasis will follow shortly. As a consequence, there is now a less than 5% chance of surviving the cancer within the next five years. As it is, there are a lot of ways in which a patient can lengthen his colon cancer prognosis. The first step is usually surgical removal of the tumor. This is then followed by chemotherapy to make sure that any cancer cells left behind will be killed off. With surgery and chemotherapy, the degree of the procedure depends largely on the stage the cancer is in. Large tumors will require bigger surgical operations and a more extensive chemotherapy compared to smaller tumors.

Radiation is one of the last resorts to prolong the prognosis. In this procedure, the patient is exposed to radiation waves to kill fast developing cells. However, since there are some cells in the body that normally divide fast such as those found in the hair, these also get killed and thus, hair loss results.

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