Note - this is the old version of the guide.. click HERE for the current version!
Statistics
There are two ways to deal with statistics about
brain tumors. Some patients ignore them and ask others not to share statistics
with them. This attitude can be a form of denial if you use it to deny
the seriousness of a brain tumor. On the other hand, it is reasonable to
decide that you will take the situation seriously but do not want to feel
trapped by the numbers and therefore do not want to know them.
Other people want to know the statistics. A summary
of survival statistics for brain tumor patients can be found at the Central Brain Tumor Registry and
the official government statistics for the last twenty years can be found at
http://www-seer.ims.nci.nih.gov.
(The government statistics go back a long time. Although some treatment
has not changed much in that time, diagnosis and surgical technologies
have changed a great deal. Old numbers may not accurately reflect
current realities.)
Unless you are familiar with analyzing statistics there are
several things you should know.
Survival statistics present averages and percents
for populations. They do not give your personal odds of survival. There
are many factors that affect a person's prognosis,
including age, how fast the tumor came on, how bad the symptoms are, where in the brain the tumor is, how healthy
you were before the tumor, and probably other factors that are not known.
A good discussion of this subject is the essay "The Median isn't the Message"
by Stephen Jay Gould, which can be found on Steve
Dunn's cancerguide.
It is important to remember that statistics are
not a certainty; at best they are a probability. No one can say that you
have a certain number of months to live. There are long term survivors, even with the worst types of brain tumors.
Moreover, there are new treatments being tried any day, and these may change
the statistics before we know it.
Last Updated: 7/10/2003
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