Question about Survival Rates
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I keep reading that in the past 10 years only about 50% of people, who where diagnosed as stage I and stage II, where given a Sentinel Lymph Node Biopsy. So when you hear statistics for stage I as haveing a 5 year survival rate of 92% and 10 year rate of 83%, how accurate can that be? I mean how many people were staged I and II who really may have been stage III at the time of diagnosis? Wouldn’t that drastically effect the survival rates?
Does this make sense? Am I missing something? Can anyone speak to that?
Thanks.
Most of what I have seen has 10 year survival rate for Stage I better than 83%. . still in the 90s. There was a Queensland study that showed 20 year survival rate of early thin melanoma at like 96% I think. I guess I used the rates we were given for Stage Ib which are a little lower than Stage Ia rates. My real questions is about those who where actually a Stage III at the time of diagnosis but didn’t know it because they did not have a SLNB….are they throwing off the numbers?? Dont look at those numbers to much i don’t really think they are meant for us patients.. more a way for the doctors to plan a treatment etc. so many factors count in your case not just how many statistically have died from it..
If an melanoma is under a certain size you don’t usually do SLNB but that doesn’t mean you don’t got it in the nodes. Also some have gotten metastases 15 years after removal of the cancer.
And with pretty fast progress in treatment those numbers they currently got is already old its probebly better now, more melanoma is removed earlier.
Of course some of them are but that is why the larger the sample the better. Statistics are a funny thing, the can be treated in a number of ways and when it comes down to applying them to one individual they really don’t work very well.
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