Family Life

10.01.10 | FL News Team

(Washington, DC)  --  New treatments and screening methods have transformed breast cancer from a virtual death sentence to a far more survivable disease.  That's according to a study of women treated at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center.  In a report, researchers say 60 years ago, a woman who received a breast cancer diagnosis had just a 25-percent chance of living ten years.  Today the survival rate is higher than 75-percent.

A team of researchers poured over the records of thousands of women treated at the center since 1944.  They say for the most challenging form of the cancer, where tumors have spread in the breast, the ten year survival rate was just 16-percent in the period from 1944 to 1955.  That figure jumped to 57-percent for those who were diagnosed between 1985 and 1994.

The full report will be presented this week at a meeting of breast cancer specialists sponsored by the American Society of Clinical Oncology in Washington, DC.  Today marks the beginning of Breast Cancer Awareness month.