“What is the success rate for radiation on cancer?”

Radiation therapy can be very successful for the treatment of many types of cancers. It is not uncommon to achieve cure rates that exceed 90% for cancers detected early. There are a number of variables that must be accounted for when evaluating success rates which include the stage of the cancer as well as tumor type, histology and co-morbidities.

Radiation has been studied for more than 50 years. The indications are determined by long term clinical studied for each type of cancer. For some cancer, such as localized prostate cancer radiation is very effective. For blood cancer like leukemia is not effective because these are wide spread cancer which cannot be covered by radiation fields.

Dear Patient,

Thank you for your interesting question.
Radiation therapy is utilized in the treatment of most cancers, and in general is very effective. However, it’s efficacy, application and timing is dependent upon the specific type of cancer; and may require, and work in conjunction with, other treatment interventions such as surgery, chemotherapy and other systemic agents such as hormone receptor targeted therapy (e.g., in the case of breast cancer). In addition, certain cancers may require a higher dose of radiation than others, or a different regimen and duration of radiation therapy. To address the question of the indications/criteria for radiation:

As stated above, radiation therapy is used to treat most cancers. Factors such as age, tumor histology (the type of cancer), tumor size, spread to lymph nodes, spread to bone, brain or other organs, symptom profile (e.g., pain) due to the disease, cancer stage, surgical margin status (positive or negative); all determine the indications/application/criteria for radiation therapy. These factors have been identified by multiple studies which have been published elucidating the effect of radiation (with or without other therapeutic interventions).

That greatly depends on the type cancer being treated, the stage of cancer being treated, and the patient's co-morbidities. You also bring up an excellent point of what exactly constitutes "success." For example, a small, peripheral, node negative lung cancer treated with stereotactic radiation has a local control rate of >95%, but the overall survival depends on the patient's characteristics. If they are otherwise very healthy, their 3-year overall survival can be around 95%, but if they have a host of medical problems, it can drop to 10% (note - this means the patient dies of something else, not the lung cancer). On the flip side, if you have advanced pancreatic cancer, the 1-year survival rate is only 10%, regardless of how healthy the patient is otherwise.
I hope this helps.

Depends on the type of cancer. Early cancer of vocal cord (T1 and T2) treated with radiation therapy alone: control rate or 5 year cure rate>90% . Some cancers such as prostate cancer in early stage is comparable with surgery. Certain cancers such as breast cancer or lung cancer may need all modalities (surgery,chemotherapy,hormonal, target and radiation therapy) to offer high cure rate. Radiation therapy can be used alone, combined with other treatments for cure or use for palliation for painful bone metastasis,relieve symptoms caused by brain metastasis or stop bleeding and compression from tumor.