Survival Rates for Soft Tissue Sarcomas

Survival rates are a way to measure how many people survive a certain type of cancer over time. They cannot tell you exactly what will happen with any one person, but they might help give you a better understanding of how likely it is that treatment will be successful.

What is a 5-year relative survival rate?

A relative survival rate compares people with the same type and stage of soft tissue sarcoma to people in the overall population.

For example, if the 5-year relative survival rate for a specific stage of soft tissue sarcoma is 80%, it means that people who have that cancer are, on average, about 80% as likely as people who don’t have that cancer to live for at least 5 years after being diagnosed.

Where do these numbers come from?

The American Cancer Society relies on information from the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) database maintained by the National Cancer Institute (NCI), to provide survival statistics for different types of cancer.

The SEER database tracks 5-year relative survival rates for soft tissue sarcoma in the United States, based on how far the cancer has spread. The SEER database, however, does not group cancers by AJCC TNM stages (stage 1, stage 2, stage 3, etc.). Instead, it groups cancers into localized, regional, and distant stages.

• Localized: The cancer is limited to the part of the body where it started.
• Regional: The cancer has spread to nearby structures or nearby lymph nodes.
• Distant: The cancer has spread to distant parts of the body such as the lungs.

5-year relative survival rates for soft tissue sarcoma

Based on people diagnosed with soft tissue sarcoma between 2015 and 2021.

SEER Stage	5-Year Relative Survival Rate
Localized	83%
Regional	60%
Distant	17%

 

Understanding the numbers

People now being diagnosed with soft tissue sarcoma might have a better outlook than these numbers show. Treatments improve over time, and these numbers are based on people who were diagnosed and treated at least five years earlier.

These numbers apply only to the stage of the cancer when it is first diagnosed. They do not apply later if the cancer grows, spreads, or comes back after treatment.

These numbers don’t take everything into account. Survival rates are grouped based on how far the cancer has spread, but your age, overall health, tumor grade, location where the tumor started (arm, leg, or retroperitoneum), how well the cancer responds to treatment, and other factors can also affect your outlook.