EXPRESSIONS USED TO DESCRIBE EFFECTS OF TREATMENT – STABLE DISEASE AND RELAPSE OR RECURRENCE

Your doctor may tell you that you have stable disease. This means that the cancer has not changed in size since you started treatment—it hasn’t got bigger but it hasn’t got smaller either. It is most unlikely that continuing this treatment will bring you any real advantage. You would just be experiencing the side effects of treatment for no benefit other than perhaps living slightly longer.

A relapse or recurrence means that the cancer is growing again after a period of being dormant. If you were in partial remission, the growths, which had temporarily got smaller but not disappeared, have started to grow again. If you were in complete remission, and have now relapsed, this means that tiny seedlings were actually there all along. They have now reactivated and grown to a size that is detectable. The remission duration or length of remission is the time between diagnosis of remission and diagnosis of relapse.

The seriousness of a relapse depends on your type of cancer and what previous treatment you have had. If you have a type of cancer for which radiotherapy or chemotherapy is potentially curative and if you have previously been treated only by surgery, you could still be cured completely. If you have one of these types of cancer but have already been treated with chemotherapy or radiotherapy, it is very unlikely that you would be cured by using the same treatment again. Usually, a temporary remission would be the most that you could realistically hope for. The first remission is the easiest to achieve, lasts the longest and is really the only one that could eventually prove to be a cure. Unless a completely different form of treatment is used, second remissions are harder to achieve, last a shorter time and very rarely prove to be complete cures. Bear this in mind if your doctor recommends treatment for a relapse.

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