Good news on cancer survival for Canadians - let's spread the love

Note: the following article discusses cancer survival rates. In the throes of cancer treatment, the last thing this patient wanted to do was read about statistics. So, even though this is a good news story for people in this part of the world, you may want to proceed with caution. Fair warning. :-)

Last night, my mother-in-law (hi Lillian) phoned with good news she had heard on the radio - if you have breast cancer, there isn't a better place in the world to be than British Columbia (my home province). On Tuesday, members of the BC Cancer Agency presented the news that was published the same day in the Lancet - when compared to  five other regions (Australia, Denmark, Norway, Sweden and the UK), positive outcomes were highest for breast and ovarian cancer patients here in BC. News was also good for BC lung and colorectal cancer patients. The one-year survival rate for lung cancer patients jumped from 36.6%  in 1995-99 to 43% in 2005-07, and for colorectal cancer patients it went from 59.8% to 64%.

The Globe and Mail discusses the report from a national perspective and the news is very good for all Canadians. The research examined survival rates for lung, breast, colorectal and ovarian cancer between 1995 and 2007 in these six countries whose common link is their universal health-care systems. The study found that survival rates have increased for all four cancers in all the countries during this time period, but the disparities indicate that there is a significant number of avoidable deaths.

Read the article for more specifics. But now let's talk about what we do with this information. My husband's aunt (hi Judy) has been very involved in cancer care in Washington State and it, too, is a remarkable hot bed of talent and teamwork. When my father was diagnosed with prostate cancer, he opted to head to Seattle for faster treatment than he would get here in BC. We feel very fortunate in this neck of the woods to have access to so many smart people all working together to share and build on common knowledge in pursuit of better prevention, more accurate diagnosis and more effective treatment. But it isn't good enough to sit and glow in our own successes; we need to find new and better ways to share it with health care teams across the world.

I had an interesting moment with my oncologist in September. We were discussing the things I would be doing to help prevent a recurrence and I was asking questions about bone loss and inflammation and the few other things my sleepy post-chemo brain had held onto. And he said a neat thing to me - "We'll see in December. I'll have more news for you after the conference I'm going to in December." As a patient, I take a great deal of comfort from that kind of interaction. I have a doctor actively seeking new information on advances in cancer treatment and care and doing it with an eye to how it affects his patients. And I wish that for every other patient in the world.

One final note: as the year closes and some of us consider making donations to charitable foundations before 2011, could I ask you to consider groups working on childhood cancers. Many thanks.