How long can you live with advanced rectal cancer? Doctor's reminder: Take these factors into consideration
Have you ever thought that if one day cancer finds you, you will simply not treat it, go to see your loved one, go to the place you want to go, and spend the last time happily? However, when cancer does arrive, no one is not afraid! This is not only from the torment of various discomforts of cancer, but also the fear when death is approaching.
Cancer has indeed shown a high incidence trend in recent years, especially digestive tract tumors, such as rectal cancer is one of them. Because its early symptoms are atypical or even asymptomatic, most patients have already reached the middle and late stages when the disease is discovered.
As a clinician in the treatment of rectal cancer, he often faces a repeated question from family members and patients: how long can we live? This is a simple and complex problem. It is simple because the prognosis of rectal cancer is directly related to the pathological stage. According to the different pathological stages and clinical experience, the five-year survival rate of the patient can be roughly judged;
And it is complicated because the same stage of the tumor, the survival time is not the same!
- Mid-term
The rectal cancer tumor in the middle stage is generally relatively large and has not spread. It can be resectioned and combined with comprehensive treatment such as radiotherapy and chemotherapy after surgery. While systemic treatment, patients should be closely reviewed and followed up. With proper control, the five-year survival rate of mid-term patients can also be as high as 50% to 60%.
However, because cancer cells may exist in other healthy cells, if they are not found during surgery and the removal is not in place, the cancer cells may also develop again and gradually metastasize, such as lymph and liver, which are the most common metastatic sites for rectal cancer cells.
- Late
After the operation, there was multi-organ metastasis, that is, it entered the advanced stage completely. Under normal circumstances, the treatment of metastatic cancer depends on the patient's own condition. If the patient's body is already very weak, and the cancer has metastasized to multiple organs, such as lymph nodes, liver and lungs, basically doctors will not recommend the patient any more. Surgery, because surgery is not very meaningful at this time.
Moreover, affected by the weakened immunity, the risk of infection after surgery is relatively high. Therefore, conservative treatment is adopted at this stage, that is, radiotherapy and chemotherapy, physical adjustment, and Chinese herbal medicine conditioning. However, with the continuous development of the patient's condition, it is ultimately unable to adapt to the negative effects of radiotherapy and chemotherapy, so the quality of life will be greatly reduced.
According to clinical statistics, the five-year survival rate of advanced rectal cancer is less than 10%, and patients can rapidly progress to death within 1 to 2 years. Especially after liver and lung metastases occur, death will come faster, and it cannot be maintained even for 1 year.
In general, the survival time of different patients is different. How long patients with advanced stage can live depends mainly on their own conditions, tumor stage, and whether they receive reasonable treatment. As long as the doctor can actively carry out treatment, the quality of life and life value will be prolonged in the later stage.
In addition, there is the biggest factor and the cruelest factor, which is "money". Although there are many ways to treat cancer have been included in the ranks of medical insurance, but after all, cancer is a long-term depleting disease, and the cost of money is relatively large. In clinical practice, some patients give up treatment because of money factors!