People diagnosed with breast, bowel and ovarian cancers and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma are today twice as likely to survive for at least 10 years as those diagnosed in the early 1970s according to new figures released by Cancer Research UK.
The percentage of women likely to survive breast cancer for at least 10 years has jumped from less than 40% to 77%, while the proportion of people likely to survive bowel cancer has risen from 23% to 50%. Twice as many patients with ovarian cancer and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma are likely to survive for at least 10 years with survival increasing from 18% to 35% and from 22% to 51% respectively. For Hodgkin’s lymphoma, 10-year survival is set to increase from less than 50% to around 80%. There is also encouraging news for leukaemia with patients four times as likely to survive for 10 years compared with those diagnosed in the early 1970s. While 10-year survival is still low for oesophageal cancer and myeloma (both below 20%), it is predicted to have trebled over the same period.
