Details About Bowel Cancer Prognosis
Bowel cancer is the occurrence of malignancy in the large or the small bowel, which is more commonly known as the large intestine and the small intestine respectively. Technically speaking, cancer of the large bowel is known as the colorectal cancer. However, it is popularly referred to as bowel cancer. Before moving onto bowel cancer prognosis, there is something important that you will have to understand. Bowel cancer can develop over the years without prominent symptoms of any kind. This makes detection of bowel cancer pretty difficult. Henceforth, you are advised to go in for colon cancer screening at least once every year. This helps in the early detection of bowel cancer.
Coming to bowel cancer prognosis, you have to understand something very clearly. Bowel cancer prognosis will be better if the cancer is detected early on. In case of all kinds of cancer, the treatment of the disease will be a lot better if the oncologist is able to determine the malignancy at early stages of the disease. Detection of bowel cancer at later stages can result in the spread of cancer and therefore the treatment will become a lot more difficult. In fact, the importance of detection of early detection of cancer cannot be overemphasized ever. Bowel cancer develops when the cells that have become malignant starts to grow at an abnormal rate. This results in the formation of masses, lumps and tumors. The lumps can grow to become extremely large. If the cancer is detected at the early stage, the cancerous lump can be surgically removed. This yields well good results.
In stage I, the bowel cancer prognosis is actually very good. In fact if a person is detected with stage I bowel cancer, there is 90% chances that he or she will have the chance of five year rate of survival. In stage I the malignancy actually penetrates the bowel wall only superficially and therefore it can be treated a lot better. And this is precisely why it is so important to go in for colon cancer screening at regular intervals. Studies have shown that only 35% to 40% of people give colon cancer screening a serious thought and do it religiously. However, this has to change if you want to deal with bowel cancer successfully.
Stage II bowel cancer prognosis basically states that patients detected with stage II bowl cancer can survive for five or more than five years if the treatment is efficient and prompt. However, it has to be understood that the chances of survival of a person who has been diagnosed with stage II bowel cancer will depend on TNM Classification of Malignant Tumors, which states that the chances of survival are anything between 55% and 85%. In the stage, the malignancy generally penetrates the muscular layers of the bowel walls.
Stage III bowel cancer prognosis states that the chances of survival of people detected with stage III bowel cancer is between 20% and 55%. In the third stage, the bowel cancer has actually totally penetrated the walls of the bowel and has infected the organs and lymph nodes surrounding the bowel. People who have been detected with this stage of bowel cancer has better prognosis if three or less lymph nodes have been infected during the time of detection. Treatment for people with four or more infected lymph nodes gets a lot more difficult.
The bowel cancer prognosis of Stage IV bowel cancer states that the chances of survival of people at this stage are less than 5%. In stage IV the cancer has spread to other parts of the body. In case of bowel cancer, the malignancy usually spreads to the lungs in stage IV. However, you have to understand that the situation and condition of all patients suffering from stage IV bowel cancer is different and this makes a uniform prognosis pretty difficult. Some studies have shown that stage IV bowel cancer patients with three or less malignant masses have up to 20% or 30% chances of surviving for up to five years.
Other than the prognosis of bowel cancer, you will have to know about the risks involved with the disease as well. If you have already suffered from bowel cancer once, the chances of your total recovery from the second bout of bowel cancer becomes less likely. If the cancer has caused a hole in the bowel, recovery from the disease becomes quite difficult. However, the prognosis may differ for different people and it is always better to ask your oncologist about your chances of recovery.