At Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, the quality of our patient care is of paramount importance and is a source of pride to everyone who works here. We strive for constant improvement in all aspects of care. To show you how we are doing, we are making our survival data available by cancer diagnosis.
The charts that appear on the following pages show survival rates for Memorial Sloan-Kettering patients treated for several types of cancer. Our outcomes are compared with national survival averages from the National Cancer Data Base (NCDB)*, which contains data from more than 1,400 hospitals across the United States — both large and small — including Memorial Sloan-Kettering. The curves show the percentage of patients surviving each year following diagnosis and treatment.
Please note four details about these curves:
- Memorial Sloan-Kettering results are based on patients initially treated here in 2003. This means that enough time has gone by to assess outcomes confidently.
- The national averages include both Memorial Sloan-Kettering patients and those from all other institutions in the NCDB. This makes the Memorial Sloan-Kettering curves appear closer to the national average curves than they would if our data were excluded from the national averages.
- The “Observed Survival” plotted on each graph takes all deaths into consideration, not only deaths from cancer.
- Surviving to a particular time point, such as five years, does not automatically imply a cure (permanent freedom from the chance of cancer recurrence). The point at which any particular patient may be declared “cured” is very variable among cancer types. Cure rates cannot be determined from these curves.
This information is a work in progress. We plan to share outcomes data for additional types of cancer in the coming months.
*The NCDB is collaboration between the American College of Surgeons and the American Cancer Society.