Uses
Five-year survival rates can be used to compare the effectiveness of treatments.
Use of 5-year survival statistics is more useful in aggressive diseases that have a shorter life expectancy following diagnosis (such as lung cancer) and less useful in cases with a long life expectancy such as prostate cancer.
Improvements in rates are sometimes attributed to improvements in diagnosis, rather than improvements in prognosis.
To compare treatments (independent of diagnostics) it is better to consider survival from reaching a certain stage of the disease.
Read more about this topic: Five-year Survival Rate