Prognosis and survival for parathyroid cancer
A prognosis is the doctor’s best estimate of how cancer will affect you and how it will respond to treatment. Survival is the percentage of people with a disease who are alive at some point in time after their diagnosis. Prognosis and survival depend on many factors.
The doctor will look at certain aspects of the cancer as well as characteristics of the person. These are called prognostic factors. The doctor will also look at predictive factors, which influence how a cancer will respond to a certain treatment and how likely it is that the cancer will come back after treatment.
Prognostic and predictive factors are often discussed together. They both play a part in deciding on a prognosis and a treatment plan just for you. Only a doctor familiar with your medical history, whether and where the cancer has spread, the treatments chosen and the response to treatment can put all of this information together with survival statistics to arrive at a prognosis and chances of survival.
The following are prognostic and predictive factors for parathyroid cancer.
Distant metastasis
Parathyroid cancer has a poorer prognosis when it spreads another part of the body (called distant metastasis), such as the lung, the liver or the bones.
Surgical margin
The surgical margin is the healthy tissue surrounding a tumour that is removed along with the tumour during surgery. After surgery, the tissue that was removed is sent to a lab. A pathologist looks at a sample of the tissue under a microscope to see if there are cancer cells in the surgical margin.
A negative surgical margin means that there are no cancer cells at the edges of the tissue removed during surgery. A positive surgical margin means that cancer cells are found at the edges.
Parathyroid cancer that is completely removed (has a negative surgical margin) has a better prognosis than parathyroid cancer that is not completely removed.
Survival statistics for parathyroid cancer
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