5 year survivability in our National Politicians who have Cancer

Tony Snow was on Bill O'Reilly's radio show and said that he does not have liver cancer. Rather, he has several small tumors in his abdominal cavity, none of which is on or in his liver. Additionally, he said they are not threatening his life.

From Wizbangblog

However Tony has spread of the tumor not to the liver but to the peritoneum(abdominal cavity) which makes it a Stage IV  which unfortunately has a poor prognosis of only 8%.

from American Cancer Society

• Stage IV: Any T, Any N, M1: The cancer can be any T, any N, but has spread to distant sites such as the liver, lung, peritoneum (the membrane lining the abdominal cavity), or ovary.

Elizabeth Edwards has Stage IV Breast Cancer with Metastasis to the Bone, Ribs and Hips.  Her 5 year although not as bad as Tony Snow's prognosis is 20% per the American Cancer Society or less than 10% on Texas Cancer Center.

 

Fred Thompson said he has "Indolent" Lymphoma.  "Indolent" is a Non-Hodgkin's Lymphomas (NHLs) or the worst of the the two main lymphomas(Non-Hodgkin's and the less virulent Hodgkin's). Indolent Lymphomas are slow growing forms of Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma. Indolent encompass what were called low grade and some categories of intermediate grade NHL in the Working Formulation. Indolent NHLs have traditionally not been as strongly responsive to conventional cancer therapies such as chemotherapy and radiation therapy. With newer immunotherapies effective treatment may be able to proceed as soon as the lymphoma is detected. 5 year survivability is  ~ 63% for Non-Hodgkin's.

National Cancer Institute

• Indolent NHL types have a relatively good prognosis with a median survival as long as 10 years, but they usually are not curable in advanced clinical stages. Early stage (stage I and stage II) indolent NHL can be effectively treated with radiation therapy alone. Most of the indolent types are nodular (or follicular) in morphology.
• While indolent NHL is responsive to radiation therapy and chemotherapy, a continuous rate of relapse is usually seen in advanced stages. Patients, however, can often be re-treated with considerable success as long as the disease histology remains low grade. Patients who present with or convert to aggressive forms of NHL may have sustained complete remissions with combination chemotherapy regimens or aggressive consolidation with marrow or stem cell support.[4,5]
• In asymptomatic patients with indolent forms of advanced NHL, treatment may be deferred until the patient becomes symptomatic as the disease progresses. When treatment is deferred, the clinical course of patients with indolent NHL varies; frequent and careful observation is required so that effective treatment can be initiated when the clinical course of the disease accelerates. Some patients have a prolonged indolent course, but others have disease that rapidly evolves into more aggressive types of NHL that require immediate treatment.

In 1993 Senator John McCain had a cancerous mole removed from his left shoulder that proved to be melanoma, the most dangerous form of skin cancer.  In August 2000 he had a Melanoma removed from his temple and his left arm.  The second and third Melanomas occurred more than 5 years after the first one and they were staged.  Pathologists indicated that Lymph nodes around the lesions were negative and staging was competed the following day by undergoing tests at the Mayo Clinic in Scottsdale including MRI/MRA of the brain, CT scans of the neck, chest abdomen and pelvis, electrocardiogram and echocardiogram. All test results were said to be normal. Thus he would be considered a Stage 0-1 (depending on the size) with a greater than 90-97% as more than 5 years have elapsed. 

 

Rudy Giuliani had Prostate Cancer treated in 2000 with Radiation Implants and Hormone Therapy and is now over 6 years out from onset of Cancer.

• Prostate cancer is the most common type of cancer found in American men, other than skin cancer. The American Cancer Society estimates that there will be about 218,890 new cases of prostate cancer in the United States in 2007. About 27,050 men will die of this disease. Prostate cancer is the second leading cause of cancer death in men. Lung cancer is the first. While 1 man in 6 will get prostate cancer during his lifetime, only 1 man in 34 will die of this disease. The death rate for prostate cancer is going down, and the disease is being found earlier as well.
  

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