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Childhood Cancer Survival Rates

Five Year Survival of Cancer Patients, Age 0-19 Diagnosed 1990 Through 2000

Early Stage Cancers

The bars in this graph show the percentage of children with early-stage cancer who survived for at least five years after doctors diagnosed their disease. Early-stage cancer is cancer that has NOT spread to distant organs. The children represented here were diagnosed between 1990 and 2000, and at that time they were age 19 or younger. The green bars show the survival rates for Children's Hospital patients; the tan bars show the average survival rates throughout the United States.

Children’s National
Wilms 93% 93%
Rhabdomyosarcoma 73% 78%
Osteosarcoma 79% 73%
Neuroblastoma 93% 84%
Ewings 79% 71%

Advanced Stage Cancers

The bars in this graph show the percentage of children with advanced-stage cancer who survived for at least five years after doctors diagnosed their disease. Advanced-stage cancer is cancer that has spread to distant organs. The children represented here were diagnosed between 1990 and 2000, and at that time they were age 19 or younger. The green bars show the survival rates for Children's Hospital patients; the tan bars show the average survival rates throughout the United States.

Children’s National
Wilms 84% 75%
Rhabdomyosarcoma 30% 33%
Osteosarcoma 40% 32%
Neuroblastoma 49% 46%
Ewings 33% 33%

Five-Year Relative Survival Rates of Cancer Patients, Ages 0-19, Diagnosed 1990 Through 2000 (ALL, AML, Brain, Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma and Hodgkin Lymphoma)

The bars in this graph show the percentage of children with certain types of cancer who survived for at least five years after doctors diagnosed their disease. The children represented here were diagnosed between 1990 and 2000, and at that time they were age 19 or younger. The green bars show the survival rates for Children's Hospital patients; the tan bars show the average survival rates throughout the United States.

Children’s National
Acute Lymphocytic Leukemia 86% 73%
Acute Myeloid Leukemia 48% 45%
Brain 75% 64%
Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma 80% 76%
Hodgkins Lymphoma 97% 93%

Five-Year Survival Rate of Acute Lymphocytic Leukemia (ALL) Patients, Ages 15-19

The bars in this graph show the percentage of children with ALL who survived for at least five years after doctors diagnosed their disease. The children represented here were between the ages of 15 and 19 when they were diagnosed. The green bar shows the survival rate for Children's Hospital patients; the tan bar shows the average survival rate throughout the United States.

Children’s National
Accute Lymphocytic Leukemia 85% 55%

Average New Cancer Patients Annually by Disease, 2001-2005

The bars in this graph show the average number of new patients treated each year at Children's Hospital for certain types of cancer. To calculate the average number, we used figures from the years 2001 through 2005.

Cancer Type Number of patients treated
Leukemia 75
Brain 55
Solid Tumors 40
Bone/Sarcomas 30
Lymphoma 20
Neuroblastoma 10
Kidney Tumors 10

Data Sources

  1. Children's Hospital and Regional Medical Center Cancer Registry. Seattle, WA. Analytic diagnoses, Kaplan-Meier Adjusted Model.
  2. Commission on Cancer, National Cancer Data Base, Chicago, IL.
  3. National: Ries LAG, Eisner MP, Kosary CL, Hankey BF, Miller BA, Clegg L, Mariotto A, Feuer EJ, Edwards BK (eds). SEER Cancer Statistics Review, 1975-2002, National Cancer Institute. Bethesda, MD, http://seer.cancer.gov/csr/1975_2002/, based on November 2004 SEER data submission, posted to the SEER web site 2005.

Diagnoses grouped according to International Classification of Childhood Cancer (ICCC) criteria.

Hematopoietic Cell Transplant Survival Rates, 2004-2007

The bars in this graph show two types of information about Children's Hospital patients who had a hematopoietic cell transplant:

  1. The percentage of patients who survived for at least 100 days after their transplant.
  2. The percentage of patients who survived for at least one year after their transplant.

Typically, patients who live for at least 100 days but who die within one year do so because their disease relapsed prior to their transplant and, despite being transplanted during the relapse, they did not recover. Patients who receive a transplant when their disease is in remission, rather than during a relapse, are more likely to survive for at least one year.

2007 Patients 2006 Patients 2005 Patients 2004 Patients
Survival 100 days post-transplant 85% 96% 96% 92%
Survival 1 year post-transplant 74% 82% 89

Hematopoietic Cell Transplants, 1969-2007

The left side of this graph lists different types of hematopoietic cell transplants. The bars show how many of each type were performed for Children's Hospital patients between the years of 1969 and 2007. Some of the categories overlap.

  • All the transplants were performed either for non-cancerous diseases or for cancerous diseases. So the total number of transplants in this time period was 335 plus 1,897 or 2,232.
  • Each transplant was either myeloablative or non-myeloablative (also known as a "mini-transplant").
  • Each transplant was either autologous (transplanting the patient's own cells) or allogeneic (transplanting cells from a donor). Some allogeneic transplants use a donor related to the patient; some use an unrelated donor. Some of these donors closely match the patient's HLA type; some are mismatched. Some use stem cells that come from cord blood (blood donated from an umbilical cord); some use stem cells taken from bone marrow or peripheral blood (blood that circulates in the body).
Types of Transplants Transplants, 1969-2005
Non-myeloablative 6
Non-cancerous diseases 335
Cancerous (malignant) diseases 1897
Autologous 338
Unrelated donor 431
Mismatched allogeneic 416
Matched allogeneic 1170
Cord blood 51

Data Source: Jean E. Sanders, MD, from data collected on all children transplanted in our program since 1969.