Rise in long-term cancer survival

People are twice as likely to live at least 10 years after being diagnosed with cancer than they were at the start of the 1970s, research shows.

More than 170,000 people in the UK who were diagnosed in the 1970s and 1980s are still alive — an “extraordinary” number, Macmillan Cancer Support said in its report ‘Cancer: Then And Now’.

The increase in long-term cancer survivors is due to more sophisticated treatment, combined with an ageing population, the charity said, acknowledging there was still a huge variation in survival rates according to cancer type.