Andy here.
Doctors generally seem to avoid telling you statistical chances of this and that, even though all of their treatments are based on analysis of such statistics.
Here are some things doctors told us.
- The 4 months of R-CHOP chemotherapy have about a 70% chance of being successful in that, at the end of it, there will be no detectable cancer and thus no further treatment in the short run. The chances of needing more treatment in the long run are high, however.
- Now-a-days, most people diagnosed with follicular lymphoma get better in that they eventually die of something else.
Here is some general information about Follicular non-Hodgkins Lymphoma, and also a bit about Large Diffuse B cell lymphoma. But no statistics.
There is a www site that gives estimates about survival. Here’s what comes out, in number of people surviving out of 100. That’s % chance of survival.
The first column, for comparison, is from an actuarial table, and concerns the average 55 year old American woman with, presumably, all mixture of ailments and lack thereof.
Another comparison is me, a 68 year old American man. According to the actuarial table, I have a 75% chance of living another 10 years.
Another negative is a decreased life expectancy from the chemo-therapy. That is, people who have no cancer re-occurance, but who have had chemo-therapy, don’t live as long. That is mixed in with the 10-years-and-less data above, but I haven’t seen any numbers for how that extends after 10 years (at least not for an adult).
On the plus side, those statistics are American averages. And Saskya is probably in generally better health than the average 55 year old American female. And, she probably has better medical care than the average 55 year old American Female.
If you want to play with the numbers in the table, here’s how:
- Click here.
- Click on “Go”.
- Then select from the pull down menu at the top: “non-hodgkin’s Lymphoma”.
- Then: female, 55 years old.
- Set stage: it is stage 4 follicular and, we think stage 2 (but maybe stage 4?, probably not) b-cell.
- Set: Diagnosed in the past 2 months.
- Read the numbers
As Michael often said, statistics aren’t good at predicting outcomes for an individual. My former father-in-law, who was got chemo for colon cancer in the 1980’s just died at 99. At my age looking at actuarial tables isn’t exactly uplifting and the longer you live, the worse it gets!
Ha-ha, oldies live dangerously! Numbers are just a way to relate to things more objectively, cool down the situation. Doesn’t work for age, though!
Because this is based on averages, agree with what Mom says. Assume most of those women aren’t as physically active as Saskya as she’s so healthy otherwise, eats really well, gets some nice sunlight and enjoys time in nature regularly. Those should make her healthier than the ‘average’, her ‘medical age’ could be different very different than her ‘physical age’
Thanks, Andy, for posting this.
Yes, thanks.
Informative? Yes. Useful for an individual prediction? No; at most vaguely. Would be much nicer if the distribution around the averages was known.