Question: what is the most deadly type of cancer??? what does it do???

Enda O'Connell answered on 15 Nov 2012:

Hi Samuel,

There are over 200 different types of cancer, affecting different parts of the body (skin, prostate, breast, bowel and lung are the most common in Ireland, in that order) each with different causes (e.g. 95% of lung cancer is caused by smoking). In both men and women, lung and pancreatic cancer have the lowest survival rate. On the other hand, testicular cancer has the highest survival rate in men, with 95% of men surviving five years or more after diagnosis, while the five year survival rate for women diagnosed with melanoma (skin cancer) is 90%.

If you look at the survival rates of people diagnosed with cancer in the 1970s, that 95% testicular cancer survival rate drops to less than 70%, while the 90% melanoma survival rate would have been less than 50%. This shows that the scientific and medical advances over the past few decades in both early detection and treatment of cancer, have had a massive effect on the survival of cancer patients.