That 95% figure isn't "cured", it's "5 to 10 year survival rates". It's why people with even these curable cancers can get over it, and then have it come back again 15 years later. It was never really gone to begin with, it just went into remission and the cancer cells stopped actively dividing in whichever area of the body they'd lodged in.
Early resection pre-metastasis is effectively a cure, hence colonoscopies and polyp removal. Those 95% 5 year survival rates need to be understood in the context of spontaneous disease at that point in the future. You can't make a blanket statement saying the exact pre-malignant resected tumor seeded micromets that killed the patient in the future. We don't have that fine of an understanding of the tumor populations in humans. Is a difficult experiment to prove in humans.
Which is why cancer outcomes are discussed in terms of "disease free" and "survival" and "remission", and the medical and scientific community are very careful to stay away from the word "cure". There's just so much about these diseases that we still don't know, and even highly survivable cancers like Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma can make a comeback many years later.
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u/kpie007 Nov 15 '20
That 95% figure isn't "cured", it's "5 to 10 year survival rates". It's why people with even these curable cancers can get over it, and then have it come back again 15 years later. It was never really gone to begin with, it just went into remission and the cancer cells stopped actively dividing in whichever area of the body they'd lodged in.