What is the survival rate for an astrocytoma?

My best friend was diagnosed with an astrocytoma and the doctor gave him 6 months. I want to know if the doctor may enjoy made a mistake in the time he gave him to live, and if he didn't, what my friend's chances of surviving are.
Answers:
You need to be more specific. What stage is the astrocytoma? Where exactly surrounded by the brain is it? Is it an astryocytoma, or is it a glioblastoma multiforme (a specific and very deadly type of astrocytoma)? If it's an advanced stage, or somewhere they can't operate, or it's a GBM, it could be 6 months.
Many factors are involved. First, in that are many types of astrocytoma, and some are worse than others. Also, a tumor can vary in severity from stage I (least severe--small tumor size, have not invaded much yet) to stage IV (most severe--large tumor size, already invaded much surrounding tissue). Glioblastoma multiforme is the kind of astrocytoma that Ted Kennedy was diagnosed with concluding year, and it has the worst prognosis. Generally, astrocytomas (regardless of type) are invasive and hard to eliminate. Your friend's doctor is the most qualified being to judge the prognosis due to the many factors involved.

That self said, prognoses are simply based on population averages; it's just a best guess. There are outliers.
For an astrocytoma, the high-status missing information is the tumor GRADE not the stage. High grade astrocytomas are essentially all fatal and the top grade astrocytoma is the GBM. Survival with a high class astrocytoma averages around 6 months. Some very low grade astrocytomas are curable...but those are usually in kids.

The doctor does not "give" a sure time to live. He's making a prediction on averages and sometimes its shorter or longer. If they make a mistake in the grading or the long-suffering just gets lucky/unlucky it may deviate from that prediction significantly.

Staging of tumors really refers to how much they have spread/metastasized and i.e. not a major feature of astrocytomas.
It depends on how long the Tumor has be growing. If it is in stage 3, then yes about 6 months. It adjectives depends on what stage it is in. now he can still do radiation therapy to try to stop it.

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