Childhood Cancer Survival Rates

Five-Year Survival of Cancer Patients, Age 0–19, Diagnosed 1994 Through 2002

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 1994 and 2002, and at that time they were age 19 or younger. The blue bars show the survival rates for Seattle Children’s patients; the green bars show the national average survival rates.

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 1994 and 2002, and at that time they were age 19 or younger. The blue bars show the survival rates for Children’s patients; the green bars show the national average survival rates.

Five-Year Relative Survival Rates of Cancer Patients, Age 0–19, Diagnosed 1994 Through 2002 (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 1994 and 2002, and at that time they were age 19 or younger. The blue bars show the survival rates for Children’s patients; the green bars show the national average survival rates.

Five-Year Survival Rate of Acute Lymphocytic Leukemia (ALL) Patients, Age 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 blue bar shows the survival rate for Children’s patients; the green bar shows the national average survival rate.

Average New Cancer Patients Annually by Disease, 2005–2009

The bars in this graph show the average number of new patients treated each year at Seattle Children’s for certain types of cancer. To calculate the average number, we used figures from the years 2005 through 2009.

Data sources

1. Seattle Children’s Hospital 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 website 2005.

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

Stem Cell Transplant Survival Rates, 2004–2010

The bars in the following graphs show information about Children’s patients who had a stem cell transplant.

The graph below shows the percentage of patients who survived for at least 100 days after their transplant:

The graph below shows the percentage of patients who survived for at least one year after their transplant:

Stem Cell Transplants, 1969–2010

The left side of this graph lists different types of stem cell transplants. The bars show how many of each type were performed for Children’s patients between the years of 1969 and 2010. 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 378 + 2,008 = 2,386.
• 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).

Data source

K. Scott Baker, MD, MS, from data collected on all children transplanted in our program since 1969.