Cancer remission is often the end-goal of cancer treatments. There a few different types of remission. In the most general sense of the term, remission is when the cancer is successfully managed with treatment—it does not necessarily mean that the cancer has been cured. It can simply mean that there is a decrease in the number of symptoms you’re experiencing as a result of the cancer responding to treatment. This is sometimes called “partial remission” [1]. It is still good, though, because it means your treatments are working and the cancer is retreating! Aside from partial remission, there is “complete remission” or “no evidence of disease”, also known as N.E.D., are when you no longer experience any symptoms of the cancer and there are no detectable levels of cancer in your body. Complete remission and N.E.D. are the most desired results from cancer treatment [2].

Now, you may ask, why are complete remission and N.E.D. the most desired outcomes? Why isn’t it being deemed “cancer-free”? Well, this is because of a technicality having to do with the limits of our current testing. While cancer research has come a long way in recent years, our tests still have something called detection limits, which is the minimum number level of disease that the test can detect [2, 3]. For example, let’s say we have a disease whose diagnostic test has a detection limit of 50 diseased cells. In order for you to register as positive for the disease on the test, you have to have 50 or more diseased cells. If you have 10 diseased cells, then the test will not be able to tell if you have the disease as it is below the detection limit. This may sound scary, but it simply means that if you do have diseased cells, there’s so few that the test cannot pick them up! It is because of these detection limits that it is not technically correct to deem someone cancer-free. However, cancer research advances every day, and scientists are constantly striving to create tests that can detect lower and lower levels of cancer.

References

1.     NCI Dictionary of Cancer terms. National Cancer Institute. (n.d.). Retrieved May 1, 2022, from https://www.cancer.gov/publications/dictionaries/cancer-terms/def/remission

2.     Haley, J. (n.d.). Treatment terminology: Remission meaning vs. cancer-free. Dignity Health. Retrieved May 1, 2022, from https://www.dignityhealth.org/articles/treatment-terminology-remission-meaning-vs-cancer-free

3.     Ricard Boqué;Vander Heyden, Y. (n.d.). The limit of detection. Chromatography Online. Retrieved May 1, 2022, from https://www.chromatographyonline.com/view/limit-detection