Triple-negative breast cancer is also more likely to recur (come back) after treatment.
Illustration by Zoe Hansen for Verywell Health
What Are Triple-Negative Breast Cancers?
That said, triple-negative tumors tend to respond better to chemotherapy.
Illustration by Zoe Hansen for Verywell Health
They are also much less likely to recur after five years than other types of cancer.
(Estrogen-positive tumors, for instance, are notorious for having late recurrences.)
What Is the Relative Survival for Triple-Negative Breast Cancer?
So what one person may experience with triple-negative breast cancer may not be what you experience.
This is why it is referred to as therelativefive-year survival rate.
It canand frequently does change as new drugs are introduced.
Metastases, in turn, are responsible for roughly 90% of breast cancer-related deaths.
Compared to hormone receptor-positive or HER2-positive breast cancers, triple-negative breast cancer is far more likely to recur.
Some studies suggest that as many as 25% of women will experience recurrence.
(By contrast, the rate of recurrence for breast cancer overall is roughly 15%.)
Most occur within three years.
The most common sites for metastases are in the lungs, brain, or distant lymph nodes.
With that said, the risk of recurrence drops the longer that you are inremission.
Studies suggest that after five years of disease-free survival, the risk of recurrence is less than 3%.
The overall five-year survival is 77%, dropping to 12% when cancer has metastasized.
Even so, newer drugs like Keytruda and Lynparza are increasing survival times in people with triple-negative breast cancer.
American Cancer Society.Triple-negative breast cancer.
American Cancer Society.Survival rates for breast cancer.
