The percentage of people with a given type or stage of cancer who are alive 5 years or longer after diagnosis. It does not take into account actual causes of death, so some non-survivors may have died from causes other than cancer. These survival rates cannot predict any one person’s outcome, which can be affected by many factors.
Even when survival rates are based on the most recent data available, they typically include information from patients treated several years earlier. Advances in treatment that have occurred since then might result in a better outlook for people who are newly diagnosed.