Kaleidoscope

Survivorship Overview

Surviving cancer or “survivorship” can be defined as the process of living with, through, and beyond cancer; cancer survivorship begins at diagnosis and includes people who continue to have treatment to either reduce risk of reoccurrence or to manage chronic disease.

Approximately 12 million people in the United States have been diagnosed with cancer and 68% of those are expected to live at least five years beyond their diagnosis. Survival rates have increased significantly over the past 40 years due to developments of the following:

• Improvements in screening and early detection
• Improvements in treatment
• More effective treatment of side effects
• Development of targeted therapies

Clinical Trials

Clinical trials are a set of procedures in medical research and drug development that are conducted to allow safe and effective data to be collected for medical devices, drugs, diagnostics, and therapy protocols. Clinical trials are designed to allow participants to play a more active role in their own health care, gain access to new research treatments before they are widely available, and help others by contributing to medical research. Information provided by cancer.net, the official clinical web resource of Kaleidoscope and at clinicaltrials.gov.