Understanding the relationship between cancer prognosis and treatment

The type of cancer you're dealing with, as well as certain other factors (such as whether breast cancer tests positive for the HER2 protein, which tends to lead to more aggressive growth), can also be important in understanding the prognosis and treatment. Certain cancers, even rare ones, may have a specific type of treatment available that offers a more optimistic prognosis. It was big news a few years back, for example, when the tumor-suppressing drug Gleevac was found to work very well against certain rare gastrointestinal tumors and the even rarer chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) by blocking specific enzymes that fuel cancer growth.The other thing to keep in mind is that cancer prognosis information and treatment options are inextricably intertwined. It might seem like extremely bad news when the doctor tells you that your mother's breast cancer is HER2-positive, which studies have shown carries a worse prognosis than HER2-negative cancers. On the other hand, newly available drugs such as trastuzumab and lapatinib can be very successful against HER2-positive cancers and have no effect on HER2-negative cancers -- so finding out that the cancer is HER2-positive opens the door to additional treatment options.