Understanding Breast Cancer Prognosis
If you’ve been diagnosed with breast cancer, you probably have many questions about what your future may hold. It’s important to remember there are a number of effective treatments for breast cancer and many people live long lives after a breast cancer diagnosis.
To help you better understand how breast cancer may affect you, your doctor will likely talk to you about your prognosis.
What is prognosis?
Prognosis is the likely outcome or course of a disease.
If you’ve been diagnosed with breast cancer, your prognosis is your doctor’s estimate of your future health after breast cancer treatment. Your doctor uses the information in your pathology report to determine your prognosis.
Breast cancer survival rates
Doctors often use survival rates to talk about prognosis. While some people want to know the statistics for others in similar situations, other people would rather not know. It’s important to remember that each person and each breast cancer is unique.
Survival rates are based on the outcomes of many people diagnosed with breast cancer, but they can’t predict exactly what will happen to you. But they can give you and your doctor a general idea of how likely it is that treatment will be successful.
The information below may be difficult for some people to read. It makes sense to think about how much you want to know about survival statistics before you read beyond this point.
How survival rates are calculated
The five-year survival rate is the percentage of people who live at least five years after being diagnosed with breast cancer. Many people will live much longer than five years after a breast cancer diagnosis.
To get five-year survival rates, doctors look at the outcomes of people who were diagnosed and treated at least five years ago. It’s important to remember that these rates aren’t based on people who are diagnosed today. Breast cancer treatments are advancing rapidly, so the five-year survival rate of someone starting treatment today could be very different from someone who was treated years ago. Sometimes researchers estimate five-year survival rates based on information from shorter follow-up periods. Survival rates also can be given in other periods of time besides five years — 10 years, for example.
Survival rates don’t always include the number of people who have a history of breast cancer but die from something other than breast cancer.
Local, regional, and distant survival rates
The American Cancer Society publishes five-year survival rates for people diagnosed with breast cancer using numbers from the Surveillance Epidemiology and End Results (SEER) database from the National Cancer Institute (NCI). The SEER database doesn’t group cancers by clinical stage (stage I, stage II, etc.). Instead, it classifies cancers as:
localized: there is no sign the cancer has spread outside the breast; this only includes invasive breast cancer — DCIS cases aren’t included
regional: the cancer has spread outside the breast to nearby tissues or lymph nodes
distant: the cancer has spread to parts of the body away from the breast, such as the lungs, liver, or bones; this is also called metastatic breast cancer
The five-year survival rates from the American Cancer Society below are based on women diagnosed with breast cancer between 2015 and 2021:
localized: 100%
regional: 87%
distant: 33%
all SEER stages combined: 92%
The five-year survival rates below are based on men diagnosed with breast cancer between 2014 and 2020:
localized: 96%
regional: 86%
distant: 28%
all SEER stages combined: 84%
Again, it’s important to know several things about these statistics: People now being diagnosed with breast cancer may have a better outlook than these numbers suggest, as many new treatments have been developed since 2014. The numbers apply only to the stage of the cancer when it was first diagnosed. They do not apply to cancer that spreads or comes back after treatment.
Breast cancer survival rates by subtype for women
The NCI calculates five-year relative survival rates for women with specific subtypes of breast cancer.
Breast cancer relative survival rates compare the survival of people diagnosed with breast cancer to people who haven’t been diagnosed with breast cancer over a period of time. This time period is often five years after diagnosis or five years after treatment starts. Five-year relative survival is calculated by dividing the percentage of people who’ve been diagnosed with breast cancer who are alive at the end of the five years by the percentage of people of the same sex and age who haven’t been diagnosed who are alive at the end of the same time period.
For women diagnosed with breast cancer between 2015 and 2021, relative survival rates by breast cancer subtype are:
hormone receptor-positive, HER2-positive: 92%
hormone receptor-negative, HER2-positive: 87%
triple-negative (hormone receptor-negative, HER2-negative): 78%
Breast cancer relative survival rates by SEER stage and subtype
The NCI also calculates five-year relative survival rates for women diagnosed between 2015 and 2021 with specific subtypes of breast cancer by SEER stage.
hormone receptor-positive, HER2-negative: 100%
hormone receptor-positive, HER2-positive: 99.5%
hormone receptor-negative, HER2-positive: 98%
triple-negative: 92%
hormone receptor-positive, HER2-negative: 91%
hormone receptor-positive, HER2-positive: 91%
hormone receptor-negative, HER2-positive: 85%
triple-negative: 68%
hormone receptor-positive, HER2-negative: 37%
hormone receptor-positive, HER2-positive: 47%
hormone receptor-negative, HER2-positive: 41%
triple-negative: 15%
Factors that affect prognosis
Certain features of the breast cancer can affect prognosis. Information about the features of the breast cancer is in your pathology report and includes:
the size of the breast cancer; in general, smaller cancers have a better prognosis
whether cancer cells are in the lymph nodes; generally, cancers that have not spread to the lymph nodes have a better prognosis
whether the cancer has receptors for the hormones estrogen, progesterone, both, or neither
whether the cancer HER2 positive, which can make it grow faster
the stage of the breast cancer; in general, cancers that are stage I, stage II, or stage III (early-stage) have a better prognosis than cancers that are stage IV (advanced-stage)
the grade of the cancer; in general, the lower the grade, the better the prognosis
According to the NCI, the stage of the cancer when it’s diagnosed may be the most important factor affecting prognosis and survival.
Talking to your doctor about prognosis
Prognosis can be difficult to talk about, for both people with breast cancer and their doctors. It makes sense to tell your doctor how much you want to know. Some people want all the details and data, while others want just a top-level overview. Knowing more or less information about your prognosis won’t affect which treatments you receive or the quality of your care.
Many people feel nervous or anxious when asking about their prognosis. This is natural and there are steps you can take to make yourself more comfortable.
Bring a family member or friend with you. This person can take notes for you and ask questions to make sure you understand everything that’s being discussed.
Decide how much you want to know and write down your questions ahead of time. You don’t have to have a detailed prognosis discussion at your first doctor’s visit. You can talk in general terms and learn a little more at each appointment. And you can always change your mind about how much information you want.
Tell your doctor if you don’t understand something. Talking about prognosis usually involves a lot of statistics and percentages. If you don’t understand what’s being said, tell your doctor. Everyone absorbs information in a different way. There may be charts, diagrams, or other handouts that can give you the information in a form that’s best for you.
Managing your feelings about prognosis
The emotions you feel when thinking about your prognosis may be very similar to how you felt when you first heard about your diagnosis: sad, anxious, angry, and fearful. Or you may feel hopeful and determined. All these feelings are normal. There are no right or wrong feelings and there aren’t right or wrong times to experience them.
Mental health support may help you to name and work through your feelings. From individual counseling to both in-person and virtual support groups to art or music therapy classes, there are a range of options so you can find the support that’s best for you. Many mental health experts recommend getting help as early as possible, but it’s never too late to reach out for support.
If your cancer center has a palliative care team, you can ask for a consult. Palliative care teams usually have a psychologist, a social worker, and a chaplain (this may vary by center). These specialists can help you (and your loved ones) talk through difficult feelings and/or help you find other resources. If you’re interested in learning more about mental health support and your cancer center doesn’t offer any, your doctor may be able to recommend professionals and resources for you.
Breastcancer.org offers virtual support groups for people with specific diagnoses, people who are in treatment, or partners of people who’ve been diagnosed. The groups are conducted via Zoom, so you can join from the comfort of your home.
— Last updated on August 14, 2025 at 5:41 PM