cancer research on % survivability after mets

Sloan Kettering has a set of prediction tools you might find handy.
Go to this link: Nomograms and enter your treatment and stats.
It will give you the survival probability for 1 year, 2 years, 5 years, 10 years, etc. and the Mean Survivability in years and months.
You might not like the answers but the numbers are there.

Good luck.

Post Edited (Worried Guy) : 4/26/2013 2:01:48 AM (GMT-6)

Hey Bermin,
No need for apologies. Everyone handles it their own way.
I used those nomograms before I found this place. I ran the numbers, saw the results and felt sick to my stomach. It was around then that I chose this screen name.

Welcome to HealingWell. Sort of. (I you know what I mean. )

Jeff

Bermin,

Welcome to our site!
If you explain your situation a bit more maybe someone can help.
For example have you been diagnosed with PCa or if you are concerned you may have it? What is your PSA level? If you have been diagnosed what are your biopsy details? This information may help people in pointing you in the right direction.

Regards,
An

Bermin,

If you tell us more about yourself we can have a better idea where to tell you to look for information, besides, of course, telling you to talk to your doctor which is always good advice.

We need information about your age, the results of any PSA blood tests or biopsies or scans, whether you have already been given any treatments, including what sort of treatments and when you got them.

You mentioned chemotherapy. Usually there are a lot of different treatments that doctors try first before they get around to chemotherapy. Have you done any hormone therapy? That can keep even advanced metastatic prostate cancer bottles up for years and years and there are more treatments becoming available every day.

It is very difficult for doctors to say how long patients will live. They can tell you what percent of the patients they treated five years ago are still alive but that doesn't tell you much about how many of today's patients will be alive five years from now since today's treatments are five years better.

Tell us a bit about yourself and you will probably hear from someone whose problem is a lot like yours and they will tell you what they plan to be doing in ten years.

Hey Worried Guy...I did know about the Sloan Kettering tool: Nomograms
I didn't have husbands LDH on any of his labs...or maybe not reading the lab reports well enough....but I put all of what I had knowledge and numbers for and the answer was very upsetting.....
Does this calculation include the chemotherapy, medications: oral and infusion (I guess it does..I re-read the footnote)
Survival Probability was 1 Year 16% 2 Year 2%
Are these numbers correct? These number are the percentage of men living that long?
This means we have only 1 year left? From when does that time frame start?
Oh, wow! I am a worried women/wife now.........
I have read and re-read...and not happy with the results....I know we are in the "short rows"...but didn't know that we were coming to the end so soon.....

I hate these things! I know it is important to have some idea but when it is shown like that it is so cold.
I was reading Walshes 3rd edition on the weekend and seen an example of my stats... It ruined my day. I felt sick all day. That ADT seems to kick the emotions up a notch.
We always have to find the positive in there somewhere! Here is how I look at it... Going into as surgery I had 90% (I think) chance of walking away from this. That didn't happen I hit the odds and was in the 10%. So I see no reason I can't hit the small odds every time. I AM going to be the 1%, someone has to be. I've proved I can beat the odds.

I think attitude is everything.

I don't post or reply often but in this thread I do have something to say. Statistics can be very misleading, age is a huge factor and how well we respond to treatment is another. At dx my PSA was 979 with mets throughout my entire skeleton, I had lost 27lbs in a matter of a few weeks. That was 3 1/2 years ago, my options were HT or orchietomy which I opted for the latter. I have been functioning and living almost normal my PSA has remained <0.1 since the surgery. I attribute my current condition to 3 things, (1) I have a medical team that I trust and listen to. (2) I have changed my diet to avoid certain foods and include others that are heart healthy and offer resistance to cancer recurrence. (3) I try to be as positive as possible, I have a supportive wife and a strong spiritual faith. I am hopefull that with new treatments I will live many more years.

Bless you all,

John

Thank you all for the advice on this forum. I hesitated to post my history because it is so long so I will post what I can and hope it does the job.

I am 72 and married with grown up children, grand children and a great grand child.

My first encounter with prostate cancer was in 2002 with a PSA 3.6 and Gleason 8 Stage II. In 2005, after a Wait and See option, I opted for a brachtherapy proceedure which left 0.5 PSA.

In April 2006 the PSA rose to 11.26 and my doctor recommended removing the prostate, however when I went to the hospital for that procedure, I was told that it was too late, the cancer had metastasized to the 5th lumbar.

My next option was hormone therapy beginning with Cassodex and subsequently Zoladex for the next several years.

Between April 2006 and December 2007, I took 7 Zoladex injections. Then I skipped Zoladex for the next 18 months..the reason being cost.

The PSA shot up to 18 in June 2009 and in July 2009 Zoladex was resumed as before and the PSA went to a low 2.01 to a high 34 in January 2012.

From January 2012 the PSA went crazy. It shot up from 34 in January 2012 to 235 in July 2012. From then on, Zoladex or not it continued up to 314 in August 2012.

Doctors looked to the effect of the cancer on my kidneys and implanted a stent in my left kidney. At this juncture the PSA dropped to 276 in September 2012 to 216.6 in October 2012.

After the next Zoldex in October PSA dropped to 110.5.

During the month of November 2012, I came down with high fever, vomiting and was diagnosed with bronchitis and anemia. They seeme to imrove so on November 20, 2012, at the recommendation of my doctor, I took a flu shot. 3 days later I got fever and chill and swollen left leg that prevented me from walking. Lost appetite, no urinate all night so my doctor admitted me into the hospital where I was treated for a cellulitis infection on my left leg. In the doctors pre-admission report it said I was also treated for sepsis.

I was medically evacuated to a hospital in Bangkok on December 24, 2012 where they treated me for the cellulitis and hemorrhoid which developed after admission. I was given colonoscopy and it helped the hemorrhoid.

Later on orchitectomy was performed to control the cancer but it did not stop the PSA.

On January 2013, the PSA shot up to 672 so chemotherapy was begun.
Three week later PSA dropped to 416.04.
After the 3rd chemo session the PSA dropped to 355.42.
After the 4th chemo session the PSA dropped to 111.74.
Three weeks later PSA dropped to 75.39.

I am taking Taxotere and followed by Peglasta. The 5th chemo session was interrupted due to a procedure that requires stopping Plavix for 7 days. Upon checking in for the procecure the blood bleeding time was not high enough so it and the the chemo sesion were postponed until it was considered safe to proceed.

I hope I have not bored anyone with my medical stuff. My main quest is to convince my medical insurer that based on the progress of the chemo treatment so far, which I have responded very well to according to my doctor, after this treatment I will be able to enjoy a normal live for the next dozen years.

I checked Sloan's nomogram for an idea but did not find any category in this program that fits my situation.

I am from Pohnpei, Federated States of Micronesia. I had my triple bypass at St. Lukes in the Philippines in 2004 followed by an angioplasty in 2007 and three more angioplasty between 2007 and 2008. I had to go back to PI because one of the angioplasty was not done properly.

When our medical insurance plan approved Bumrungrad as one of the medical services to its beneficiaries I switched to Bumrungrad. My wife is Thai and we have a house in Bangkok. I had another angioplasty in 2009 and two stents in the kidneys in 2012 and 2013. The left one was removed recently because it did not service its purpose and became a foreign object in there and causing unnecessary infection.

I have done some surfing on Provenge and it appears like a good one after chemo. Thank you for the mention

I do not put a lot of stock in Partin tables and the like and I was a math major. Sounds like your initial episode was in 2005. If you entered your metrics from 2005, it would be interesting to see that in past 8 years, you have probably already challenged the wisdom of the tables.

My understanding is that those tables are backward looking rather than forward looking. I think it might have been Peter's post that alluded to emerging technology that can really sway the metrics in our favor.

I know my son got all worried when he did the research and I told him those are averages and each of us in unique.

Advanced PCa is a formiddable foe, so we all have to be smarter and more persistent than it is, such than when we all eventually die (PCa and non PCA alike will all each die some day) it is with PCa and not as a direct result of it.

With numbers like 16% and 2%, how are there so many members on this and other forums? Check out Dr. Snuffy Myers' chronology on prostateforum.com 2 years to live in 1999 and still going strong today and helping so many people.

I'll take faith over worry any day. When compared to eternity, even 100 years is but a blink of the eye.