Metastatic breast cancer survival stats
I have had these notes for ages and I have shared them with people many times but so often on social groups, facebook, social media, zooms etc they’re unpopular and ignored.
Lots of people like to be in denial, pretending not to listen to reality numbers.
It’s bullshit pretending how much better things are. Here will be your quick lesson with the data.
I will start with data from 2010-2015. Yup, not ideal, that’s 7 years out. I will update it for you but this has got to be one the best places to start so here we go. One article which will give you excellent view.
Table 3 is the place to look at. You will see it matters:
-HER2+ (human epidermal growth factor 2) or neg
Just have a look at each of the 4 squares. Pick a hormone category, look at the left up & down, find 50% spot & go sideways across, pick whatever color chart you like, then go down to the bottom left to right sign. That will tell you at which months alive the median is falling apart.
A median means that at a given point, 50% are dead, 50% are alive.
(Just take a moment to pause & think this because this is the part constantly skipped on in discussions and social media. Half are dead but people pretend they’re in a full room of survivors. Way too easy to ignore and not count the dead… )
You can also look the other way. Look at the bottom left to right, find the number 60 (60 months = 5 years) and go up. Pick a color chart and go to the left when you hit it & you’ll see what percentage of that group hits 5 yr survival.
All clear, right?
(if you want to read the whole article, go crazy but honestly, the chart is all we need. https://bmccancer.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12885-019-6311-z)
Now it’s 7 years later and even though I’ve been ill and unwell in many ways, I will post the 7 year estimate & what is changing in the past 7yrs as announced at ESMO & ASCO this spring.
That is a summary of percentage groups hitting the 5 yrs.
Some more details if you’re really interested:
The HER2+: is the big wow, shit is happening section. Not only is their median outsource up, there is now a whole new thing about people with quite *low* HER2+ also responding. So a big thing (but the majority of MBC does not have HER2+) Still, this will be an area of much research and investigation.
ER2+: disappointing news about palbociclib. Still confusing a lot but the thing that is supposed to be improving turns out that overall survival median is not really moving as much as they’d hoped. Here’s a link to an article this month. https://www.biospace.com/article/pfizer-misses-the-mark-for-overall-survival-in-breast-cancer-patients/
Triple negs changes in last years - look at the chart above & now consider these additional things:
-if BRCA positive, can have special genetic treatment meds which buy time
-PD-L1 positive can respond to some immunotherapy to buy time
-Trodelvy responders can buy some time
Thing is, most triple negs are not hitting these three responses and what we seem to have added in the last 7 yrs is about 12 months to a median?
There is some excitement this year about a portion of triple negs testing some positivity for HER2+ and registering an additional 10 months! Very exciting if someone can actually get the HER2+ & it appears to be adding 10 months to the chart that’s above (I’m HER2- on three different tests so far so alas, that sucks)*
That’s about it. That’s where we’re at today.
This is the problem with social groups: dead people are way outnumbered and they cannot post or communicate. Because they’re dead.
There are going to always be outliers and if they’re very active participants, they seem to alter the data but it’s a giant myth. They’re outliers, they’re freaks, everyone is studying who is responding long and why and how and none of it is really an instant reward to a viewer. We know what the numbers are for the whole group, every individual can have different outcomes - including a very fast death, or a longer survival to several years. It can vary for individual but as a population, the numbers are all here. Way more dead people than buying time so don’t get sucked in by the yellow outliers as representing the group stats & ignoring that there are tons of sad deceased members.
Reality is things are still pretty shit - esp for TNBC group.
*I have been thinking about HER2+ so much and actually expressed how much I hoped having it. To which a HER2+ person got super pissy at me being jealous about it & blocked me because talking about how much better it would be and being all obsessed about it pissed her off. WTF ?
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