Once the medical team has assembled all the information possible to determine staging, it will offer a prognosis. This can be a tricky business, as there are many variables that affect a woman's health and response to breast cancer treatment.
Sometimes doctors will discuss prognosis in terms of statistical "cure rates," "recurrence rates," or "survival rates." This can sound very impersonal, but it's the medical profession's way of offering its best guess in terms of what you can expect.
One measure commonly used is the 5-year survival rate, which means the percentage of those who live at least five years after being diagnosed. Keep in mind that many of these patients live considerably longer than five more years, but they may be tracked for only five years.
Another term is 5-year relative survival rate, which takes into account the fact that some patients with cancer will die from other causes. Many organizations are adopting this number, as it's considered more accurate.
Assuming you're invited to your family member's doctor visits, pay close attention when her doctor gives her this information, and ask as many questions as you need to in order to understand the information. A person who's still reeling from a cancer diagnosis may have trouble taking in what she hears.
For example, the doctor may tell her that among all people with breast cancer, five-year relative survival is 100 percent for stage I, 86 percent for stage II, 57 percent for stage III, and 20 percent for stage IV. But these are very general numbers -- her doctor can use information about tumor characteristics and general health to offer her a better sense of her own breast cancer and put these statistics in perspective.
