Absolute Risk Reduction Or Benefit. This is the absolute difference in results between alternatives. So, for example, if treatment A increased survival by 22% and treatment B increased survival by 20% then treatment A resulted in an absolute benefit of (22%-20%) = 2%.

Relative Risk Reduction Or Benefit. This is the relative difference in results between alternatives. So, in the above example, the relative benefit is (22%-20%)/20% = 10%. This number is calculated by taking the difference in outcome as a percentage.

You should beware that often results are presented as relative risk reduction or benefit because the numbers sound more impressive. For example, in the above example, a relative benefit of 10% sounds more impressive than an absolute benefit of 2%.

Are there any other features of my cancer that I should be aware of?

Well, as we mentioned above, cancers are abnormal cells. And there can be different types of cancer cells even in the same organ. For example, a lung cancer can be a squamous cell carcinoma, an adenocarcinoma, a large cell carcinoma, or a small cell carcinoma.

And, the mortality rates and the treatments may differ substantially for the different cell types.

In addition, the degree of abnormality even in the same cell type can differ from patient to patient. For example, the most common type of prostate cancer is adenocarcinoma.

But some prostate cancer patients with adenocarcinoma have slowly growing cancer cells while others with the same adenocarcinoma might have more rapidly growing cancer cells.

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