In outpatient clinics and wards, many patients and their families ask the same question: Doctor, how long can a person live with this disease (lung cancer)? Although I have heard this question many times, I still have emotions in my heart. One of them is the relentlessness of the disease, and the other is the strength of life.
To come back to the point, the survival time of lung cancer is closely related to the following aspects. I. Classification and stage of lung cancer Lung cancer is divided into small cell lung cancer and non-small cell lung cancer. Small cell lung cancer is generally divided into limited stage and extensive stage. About 1/3 of patients with small cell lung cancer have limited lesions and 2/3 have extensive lesions at the time of diagnosis. Patients with limited lesions have a 2-year survival rate of 35%-40% after chemotherapy. Most patients with extensive lesions survive only about 10-12 months after chemotherapy. Non-small cell lung cancer can be divided into four stages: Stage I non-small cell lung cancer is the earliest stage, which can be subdivided into Stage 1A and Stage 1B. The 5-year survival rate for all surgically treated stage IA NSCLC patients is approximately 80%. The 5-year survival rate for all surgically treated stage IB NSCLC patients is approximately 60%. For stage II non-small cell lung cancer, the 5-year survival rate is approximately 40%-50% for all patients with surgically treated stage II non-small cell lung cancer. Some patients with stage III non-small cell lung cancer are still able to undergo surgery. Their 5-year survival rate is 25-30%. Stage IV non-small cell lung cancer has the highest stage of lung cancer, and on average, patients with stage 4 non-small cell lung cancer have a 5-year survival rate of 2 percent. The five-year survival rate refers to the percentage of a certain tumor that survives for more than five years after various comprehensive treatments, which does not mean that one can only live for five years. Whether the patient has undergone systematic and regular treatment Systematic and regular treatment is of great significance to the prognosis of cancer patients, even for advanced stage lung cancer patients, systematic and regular treatment can improve the quality of life and prolong the survival period. Individual differences Even if patients with the same stage are treated with the same plan, their results are not the same, and the survival time may be longer or shorter, which is the reason for individual differences. This is also one of the important factors that cannot give a specific survival time. Fourth, other related factors such as nutritional status, mental status, and adjustment of mind also have an impact on survival time. From this, we can see that survival time is the result of a combination of factors, so we cannot determine the specific survival time based on one factor. With the continuous progress of medical technology, more and more early stage lung cancer has been detected, and after regular and systematic treatment, the survival time has been greatly extended.