A cure for cancer is considered the Holy Grail for patients, researchers and doctors alike.
However, the word cure is nuanced and complicated when it comes to cancer as well.
The experts at the CyberKnife Center of Miami, the premier cancer treatment center in South Florida, want you to understand why.
Understanding Cure for Cancer
Firstly, cure means the cancer is gone and will never return, according to the American Cancer Society. And it’s that word ‘never’ that raises eyebrows in the medical community. Because as with most things in life, there are no guarantees.
“It’s rare that a doctor can be sure that cancer will never come back. In most cases it takes time to know if the cancer might come back. But, the longer a person is cancer free, the better the chance that the cancer will not come back,” according to the American Cancer Society.
Understanding In Remission for Cancer
That’s why doctors and researchers tend to use the word ‘remission.’ That refers to the period when the cancer is either under control or responding to treatment.
Remission can last for weeks or even years. And the longer the better.
It can be complete remission – meaning cancer cells cannot be detected by any tests. Or it can be partial remission – meaning the cancer has shrunk but has not gone away completely.
Understanding Survival Statistics
Survival statistics are also worth mentioning.
The survival rate is the percentage of patients alive at a certain time after diagnosis. For example, the five-year relative survival rate is the number of people who will be alive five years after diagnosis.
The overall survival rate is the percentage of patients with certain types and stages of cancer who have not died for any reason during a specific period of time after being diagnosed.
And the cancer-or-disease-specific survival rate is the percentage of patents with a specific stage and type of cancer who have not died as a direct result of that specific cancer during a set period of time.
When it comes to the word ‘survivor’ it tends to mean different things to different people. For some, it is living as a cancer survivor for others it’s someone just finishing cancer treatment.
And then for another subset – it means living with cancer.
Understanding Success Rates of Cancer Treatments
That leads to different treatments and their success rates. The goal of treatment can mean different things to different patients – depending on where they are in their cancer journey.
For some, success is a treatment leading to remission. For others, success is living longer with the help of treatment. It can also mean fewer long and short-term side effects, more effective treatments, less pain from treatment or the disease itself – and even being able to maintain your lifestyle during treatment.
And there are different treatment options depending on the type of cancer. Including surgery, chemotherapy, radiation or immunotherapy.
CyberKnife Treatment Success Rate
If your cancer requires radiation, CyberKnife — a state-of-the-art, noninvasive radiation treatment system can successfully treat cancers of the prostate, lungs, liver, kidneys, pancreas, head and neck, lymph nodes and brain, as well as other metastatic cancers.
It offers benefits like fewer treatments, fewer side effects, pain reduction and in many cases can lead to remission.
Prostate Cancer Success Rates
CyberKnife as a treatment for prostate cancer shows high success rates. Accuray reports that for low-risk patients the disease-free five-year survival rates are between 97% and 99%. For intermediate risk patients the rate is between 88% and 97%. And at 10 years the disease-free survival rate is 93% for low-risk patients.
Lung Cancer Success Rates
According to Translational Lung Cancer Research, a 2017 study of elderly patients with presumed primary stage one lung cancer who were treated with CyberKnife showed the 1, 3 and 5 year cancer-specific survival rates at 98%, 81.3% and 67% respectively.
Kidney Cancer Success Rates
According to the experts at CyberKnife Miami, as the first-line treatment for kidney cancer, CyberKnife can achieve local control in 90% of patients with the median follow-up time of 18 months. Radicular pain which radiates along the path of a nerve, has been relieved in 25-to-85% of patients.
Liver Cancer Success Rates
According to Accuray: The “overall survival at the one-year follow-up was 78.5 percent and at the two-year follow-up was 50.4 percent” for patients with liver cancer.
And a study of 75 liver cancer patients treated with CyberKnife found that after two years 89.8% of patients showed no progression of cancer beyond the liver.
Brain Cancer Success Rates
Accuray, the maker of CyberKnife, tracks all clinical trials where CyberKnife is involved. According to its website, CyberKnife has promising results when used for brain cancer:
“In a clinical study of 333 patients using the CyberKnife System to treat tumor metastases to the brain, more than 85 percent of evaluable patients achieved local tumor control at two years post treatment2. That is, the tumor either decreased in size or stopped growing,” Accuray reports.
The CyberKnife Advantage
CyberKnife’s missile guidance technology enables, Stereotactic Body Radiation Therapy (SBRT), as it’s also known, to track a tumor’s movement in real time. The technology delivers radiation directly to the tumor, while leaving healthy surrounding tissue unharmed. With CyberKnife, patients often need a much shorter course of treatment than with traditional radiation because SBRT is targeted radiation.
CyberKnife has been used for more than two decades and studied in clinical trials for more than 30. It has helped hundreds of thousands of patients – even patients who were told they couldn’t have more radiation, or their tumors were inoperable.
Cancer Treatment Center Miami
CyberKnife Miami opened its doors more than 20 years ago and was the first CyberKnife center to open in the Southeast.
Since that time, we have successfully treated thousands of patients from South Florida and around the world. We’re often called upon to train others how to use CyberKnife. We’ll also take on the toughest cases that may be turned away from other cancer treatment centers. And we’re here to help you too.
If you are interested in learning more about CyberKnife technology and how the team at CyberKnife Miami may be able to help you, call us at 305-279-2900, and go to our website now to see patient testimonials, what we treat and how. www.cyberknifemiami.com