Last year the Metastatic Breast Cancer Network declared October 13 to be Metastatic Breast Cancer Awareness Day. (I'm not sure why, but why not?) In the past year they have had a number of cities around the country join on.
In that spirit, here are some statistics I found on metastatic breast cancer --
• No one tracks how many US women live with metastatic breast cancer.
• The American Cancer Society says that 27% of female breast cancer diagnoses are stage IV (metastatic) disease. (source)
• The five year survival rate for women diagnosed with metastatic disease is 27%. (source)
• National Cancer Institute (NCI) research for breast cancer has been flat or reduced since 2003 (source)
• Only 29% of all NCI breast cancer research goes toward treatment. (79% goes toward everything else – prevention, early detection, causes, biology, survivorship) (source)
• As of 2006, of the roughly $5 billion NCI funding, only 1% goes into research pertaining to metastasis of any kind, much less breast cancer metastasis. (source)
• NCI projects 40,080 women will die of breast cancer in 2008, and that 450 men will die of breast cancer in 2008. (source)
October 13, 2008
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i was not aware that there was so little being done research wise on Stage IV - that is not good, with almost three-fourths not surviving to 5 years.
ReplyDeletePam only made it 19+ months after diagnosis of stage iv.
Jill,
ReplyDeleteI think your blog is great and very helpful to other people. Have you checked out cancereducation.com? They have a new feature called Faces where you can post a video of your story and share it with others who could benefit from it.