Japan 10-Year Cancer Survival Rate at 53.3%

Jiji Press

13:53 JST, March 16, 2023

TOKYO (Jiji Press) — The 10-year survival rate for people diagnosed with cancer in Japan in 2010 stood at 53.3%, the National Cancer Center said in a survey report Wednesday.

The rate fell 6.9 percentage points from the previous 2009 survey, but the decline came as the center introduced the net survival rate, an internationally recognized calculation method that counts deaths when cancer is the only cause.

The relative survival rate, used so far in the survey, tends to overestimate the survival rate for stomach and bowel cancers that are common among elderly people, the center said.

“Although the survival rate declined, the rate is still on an improvement trend as the change in the calculation method only corrected the overestimation,” said Taisuke Ishii of the center’s Institute for Cancer Control.

The latest survey covered 341,335 cancer patients at 316 hospitals across Japan.

Stomach cancer had a net survival rate of 57.6%, 9.5 points lower than the relative survival rate.

Bowel cancer’s net survival rate came to 57.9%, 8.8 points lower than the relative rate, while the net survival rate for prostate cancer stood at 84.3%, 15.6 points lower.

The overall net survival rate was 7.2 points lower than the relative rate. Still, the relative rate was up 0.3 point from the previous survey at 60.5%.

The center said the five-year survival rate stood at 66.2% for people diagnosed with cancer in 2014-2015. The rate came to 95.1% for prostate cancer and 91.6% for female breast cancer.