Welcome to the 10-year Breast Cancer Survival Prediction System of The George Washington University Cancer Institute. The Institute is pleased to provide this information to all women with a diagnosis of breast cancer. The system is based on information collected by the National Cancer Institute all over the United States from thousands of patients with breast cancer. The Survival System represents the chance of surviving for up 10 years after diagnosis.

The system depends on predictive factors collected at time of diagnosis and treatment. Factors include age at diagnosis, race, stage of disease, histological grade, and hormone receptor status. These factors are known by your physician who has the responsibility to report these to his or her patients.

These factors govern survival to a large extent. Stage refers to how far the disease has spread by the time of surgery, histological grade to how closely the cancer resembles normal breast tissue, and hormone status to the presence or absence of estrogen and progesterone receptors in the cancer, which affect treatment type. Histological grade 1 is often referred to as "well differentiated" tumors, grade 2 to "moderately differentiated tumors", and grade 3 and/or grade 4 to "poorly differentiated or undifferentiated tumors". Your physician can explain the meaning of these factors in more detail.

Cancer patients are naturally concerned about the future. Understanding cancer and what the future holds is important to all patients so that decisions about lifestyle, financial arrangements, and quality of life can be made. The first question for the doctor is often "What are my chances for survival?"

These survival predictions do not contain information about treatment. For this reason, survival may vary slightly depending on the type of treatment selected by you or your doctor. Other conditions, such as the presence of other diseases, may interfere with treatment. All information is based on patients who had been treated.

No predictions are made for ductal carcinoma in situ, often called "DCIS" or in situ carcinoma, or for lobular carcinoma in situ, often called "LCIS", because of the excellent survival after treatment.

Please refer to the next page and highlight your factors . The 10-year survival appears as a table and graph.

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