Triple-Negative Breast Cancer Prognosis and Survival Rates
If you’ve been diagnosed with triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC), your prognosis is your doctor’s estimate of how the disease will affect you after treatment.
Doctors often use survival rates (the likelihood of being alive) to talk about prognosis. While some people want to know the statistics for others in a similar situation, other people would rather not know. There’s no right way to go through a cancer diagnosis — it’s a very personal decision.
TNBC survival rates are based on the outcomes of many people diagnosed with triple-negative disease, but they can’t predict exactly what will happen to you. It’s also important to remember that these rates aren’t based on people who are diagnosed today. Five-year survival rates are based on people who were diagnosed at least five years ago, and usually more. Thanks to advances in medicine, the prognosis of someone starting treatment today could be very different from someone who was treated years ago.
TNBC 5-year survival rates
The National Cancer Institute (NCI) calculates five-year relative survival rates for women with specific subtypes of breast cancer. The numbers come from a national database of cancer diagnoses.
This relative survival rate is calculated by comparing the survival of people diagnosed with triple-negative 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.
For women diagnosed with TNBC between 2016 and 2022, the five-year relative survival rate is 78.7%. That means that more than three-quarters of women were alive after five years.
TNBC 5-year survival rates by stage
The NCI also splits up survival rates by stage. Instead of grouping cancers by clinical stage (stage I, stage II, etc), it classifies cancers as localized, regional, or distant (metastatic cancer).
| Subtype | 5-year TNBC survival rates |
|---|---|
Localized: there is no sign the cancer has spread outside the breast; this only | 92.8% |
Regional: the cancer has spread outside the breast to nearby tissues or lymph nodes | 68.3% |
Distant: the cancer has spread to parts of the body away from the breast, such | 14.9% |
Recurrence rates
Triple-negative breast cancer is more likely than other types of breast cancer to recur (or come back) within three years of diagnosis. The NCI doesn’t publish recurrence rates, but studies suggest about 40% of people with stage I, stage II, and stage III TNBC will experience a recurrence after standard treatment. If the cancer doesn’t recur within five years, however, it’s unlikely to come back.
