Chemotherapy is a treatment to cure cancer. In chemotherapy treatment, drugs are administered which kills cancerous cells. Chemotherapy treatment extends survival and also improves quality of life. However, chemotherapy effectiveness depends on individual patient and treatment goal. Chemotherapy survival depends on many factors including patient prognosis, types of cancer, stage of cancer and type of chemotherapy.

Patients with metastatic cancer have short life expectancy. Even though there are improvements in treatment options, chemotherapy survival benefits tend to be modest. Also chemotherapy treatment is highly toxic which causes side effects. However, chemotherapy is mostly being given closer to the end of life.

Palliative chemotherapy is applied to patients with incurable cancer. Though palliative chemotherapy is unlikely to produce a major survival benefit but improve tumor related symptoms. Survival benefits form palliative chemotherapy is modest, often measured in months rather than years.

Non Small Cell Lung Cancer Survival Rate

In non small cell lung cancer, neoadjuvant chemotherapy which is applied prior to surgery does not improve survival period when compared with surgery alone. It is also recommended that because of non adjuvant chemotherapy, your surgery should not be delayed.

However, adjuvant chemotherapy when applied immediately after can significantly improve survival and also lessens chances of reccurrence of cancer.
When chemotherapy treatment is applied in combination with radiation improves survival. According to studies chemotherapy helped to improve five year survival in patients with early stage cancer. Adjuvant chemotherapy also extends survival in advanced endometrial cancer.

Survival Rate For Breast Cancer

Women suffering with breast cancer when treated with combination of chemotherapy with hormonal therapy improve chances of long term survival. Age of the women at diagnosis also play vital role in the long term survival. Women in their late 40s have better chance of long term survival than women in their 20s and 30s when treated with chemotherapy for breast cancer.

When cancer is discovered in its early stages, traditional treatment includes removing the cancerous tumor is applied. However, chemotherapy treatment is also applied to improve survival rate for the patients with colon, breast and ovarian cancer. Though chemotherapy treatment improves survival rate, it is associated with some side effects such as nausea, sickness, fatigue, diarrhea and others.

Survival benefit is frequently the primary outcome measure in studies related to chemotherapy treatment and most of the patients do give a priority on survival rather than quality of life. However, it is important to discuss clearly survival benefits before treatment decisions are being made as there can be considerable gap between actual results and patients hope.