When is cancer considered healed or in remission?

Experts explain the difference between what it means to have cancer remission and to be healed from the disease.

After a patient underwent cancer treatment, it may be told that the disease is in “remission” or that was “Healed”but there is a distinction between these terms.

What does a cancer mean being in remission and what does it mean to have been healed?

There are two types of cancer remission: “full remission” e “partial remission“.

A full remission means that a person’s cancer is responding to treatment, that has no signs or symptoms of the disease and that There are no cancer cells.

A partial remission It means that treatment is working, but the tests show that Some cancer cells remain in the body. On the other hand, when a patient has “stable disease“It means that your condition is not improving or getting worse in response to treatment.

According to, doctors cannot predict the duration of remissionso there is the possibility of cancer back. Remission can last weeks or years.

If a patient remains in complete remission for five years or more, some doctors may say that the patient is “healed“Which means it has no symptoms or signs of long -term cancer.

However, even if a patient is considered healed, he can still have cancer cells not detected in your body which can cause a recurrence of the disease one day. Thus, doctors are more likely to say that a patient is “healed” if he has a type of cancer with a high survival rate of five years when detected early, such as or, which is a type of skin cancer.

Epidemiologists can also use a term known as “statistical healing”In this context, which means that a patient survives enough time for his risk of cancer death to be normal again, he said Vijay Trisalsurgical oncologist at the Cancer Research Center City of Hopein California.

For example, if anyone had for 10 years and is now free from cancer, his risk of dying of the disease has effectively returned to the risk of the basis that would be expected from other people of his age, he added.

However, the term “treatment”It should be used with caution, said Talsal. Although it may anxiety of some patients and allow them resume your normal lifecan make others less vigilant e more susceptible to avoid future tests e trace that could help detect recurrence, he added.