5-year survival is best described as?

• A. The rate of new cases diagnosed in a five-year period.
• B. The percentage of people alive five years after diagnosis or initiation of treatment.
• C. The percentage of patients who are disease-free five years after treatment.
• D. The percentage of people who die within five years.

Answer: (B)

Five-year survival is the proportion of patients who are alive five years after diagnosis or after starting treatment. It measures prognosis over that time frame, regardless of whether they remain disease-free or have any remaining disease.

This is not the rate of new cases diagnosed in a five-year period, which is incidence. It is also not disease-free survival, which would require patients to be alive and free of detectable disease at five years. It is not the percentage who die within five years; that would focus on mortality, while survival looks at who remains alive at the five-year mark (with death within the window counted in the complementary sense).

In short, the five-year survival captures how many people are still living five years after the starting point, making it the best description of this measure.