What this site is for
The Cancer Anatomy Explorer exists to help people who have just been given a cancer diagnosis, and the families sitting beside them, understand what they have been told.
After a diagnosis, people are handed a cancer type, often a stage, and a treatment plan, usually in one appointment and usually while frightened. This site sets out, for each area of the body: how many people in that situation are alive five years later, what treatment is given with the aim of cure, which treatments have just been approved, which clinical trials are recruiting now, and five questions worth asking at the first appointment. Everything is free, needs no sign-up, and comes from public sources that are named on every card.
It is built to be read alongside your own medical team, not instead of them. The best use of it is to arrive at an appointment knowing what to ask.
How this site is classified. The Cancer Anatomy Explorer is an educational reference. It publishes figures and treatment information already in the public record, in plain language, with the source named on every card. It is not a medical device, it performs no diagnosis, it makes no prediction about any individual, it takes in no personal or health information about you, and it is not regulated as a clinical decision support tool. Doctors are welcome to use it the way they would use any published reference, as a starting point to be checked against the primary source, which is always linked.
This is information, not medical advice. Nothing here is a diagnosis, a treatment recommendation, or a prediction about any one person. It cannot take account of your own health, test results or circumstances, and it is no substitute for a doctor who knows your case. Always take decisions about tests, treatment and care with your own medical team. If you are unwell or worried about symptoms, contact them or your local emergency service rather than reading on.
Who is SEER?
SEER stands for Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results. It is a program of the National Cancer Institute, part of the US National Institutes of Health, and it began collecting data on January 1, 1973, after the National Cancer Act of 1971.
SEER gathers records from population-based cancer registries that now cover about 46% of the US population. For each cancer it records the type, where it started, how far it had spread at diagnosis, the first treatment, and whether the person is still alive in later years. It is the only comprehensive US source that tracks both stage at diagnosis and survival across whole populations, which is why most survival figures in this explorer come from it. Death counts come from the National Center for Health Statistics.
What does 5-year relative survival mean?
It is the share of people with a cancer who are alive five years after diagnosis, compared with people of the same age and sex in the general population. Comparing the two groups removes deaths that would have happened anyway, so the figure reflects the effect of the cancer itself.
A figure of 91% means people with that cancer are, on average, 91% as likely to be alive in five years as similar people without it. It is not the same as a cure rate. Many people live far longer than five years, and some cancers, such as chordoma, can return after five years.
What do localized, regional and distant mean?
SEER groups cancers by how far they had spread when first diagnosed. Localized means the cancer was confined to where it started. Regional means it had grown into nearby tissue or lymph nodes. Distant means it had spread to faraway organs such as the liver, lungs or bones.
These are not the stage 1 to 4 numbers doctors use, which follow the more detailed TNM system.
Each stage also shows a second figure, such as "34% of cases are found at this stage". That is the share of all cases of that cancer caught at that point, not anything about one person's chances. It says how often the cancer is found early, which largely reflects whether screening exists and whether early disease causes symptoms. Half of bladder cancers are found while still in the lining; half of pancreatic cancers are not found until they have spread.
Those shares do not add up to 100%, because SEER keeps a fourth group the cards do not show: unstaged cases, where the records do not say how far the cancer had spread. Stage goes unrecorded when someone is too unwell for full staging scans or a biopsy, when the diagnosis is made without one, or when the registry never received the detail. The gap is small for cancers found by screening and larger for those diagnosed late or in frail patients: about 3% of bladder cancers are unstaged, 4% of lung cancers and 11% of liver cancers. A little of the difference is also rounding, since each share is given as a whole number.
Unstaged cases are not in any of the stage survival figures either. They are counted in the all-stages figure at the top of each card, which is one reason that figure does not sit where you might expect from the stage figures alone.
Why the survival figures look backward
To know who is alive five years after diagnosis, people must have been diagnosed at least five years ago. The most recent figures cover people diagnosed between 2016 and 2022, and some cards use earlier periods where that is the latest published breakdown. Treatments have improved since then, so people diagnosed today may do better than these numbers show.
These are averages across large groups. They cannot predict what will happen to one person, whose outlook also depends on age, overall health, the tumor's biology and how it responds to treatment.
Where the case and death numbers come from
Each January the American Cancer Society projects how many new cases and deaths to expect that year, using registry data and national death records. The 2026 numbers on each card are those estimates. Colon and rectal cancer deaths are reported together because death certificates often record one as the other.
For colon cancer, rectal cancer, chondrosarcoma and chordoma, SEER's own summary pages do not publish survival separately, so those cards use the American Cancer Society's analysis of SEER data. Each card footer names its source and period.
Stage numbers and survival groups
The stage your team gives you, such as IIIB or IVA, is finer than the three groups these figures come from. On the cancers where the mapping has been checked against SEER's own rules, the card lets you select your stage, or what was found, and shows which group it belongs to.
The two systems do not always agree in the way you would expect. Prostate stage IVA is cancer in the regional pelvic nodes, which counts as regional, not distant. Breast cancer in nodes above the collarbone counts as distant even though nothing has reached an organ. A muscle-invasive bladder cancer still counts as localized. Where a stage could fall in either group, the card says so and suggests asking your team, rather than picking one.
What the green NEW flag means
Cancer treatment changes faster than survival figures can show. The figures on this site describe people diagnosed years ago, so the newest treatments are not in them yet. The Newly approved treatments section on each scorecard is there to close that gap: it lists what the US Food and Drug Administration has approved for that cancer, newest first, with the date of each decision.
A green NEW flag means an approval in the last 60 days. It appears beside the body area in the list, so you can see at a glance which cancers have something new, and on the approval itself. The flag disappears on its own as the approval ages.
Approval means a treatment is available, not that it is right for any one person. Most of these new treatments only work for tumors with a particular gene change or protein, found by a test on the tumor or a blood sample. That is why so many of the questions on these cards are about which tests have been done. If something here looks relevant to you, the useful step is to ask your oncologist whether your own test results fit, not to ask for the drug by name.
The source is the FDA's Oncology and Hematologic Malignancies Approval Notifications page, which dates every approval it announces. Each scorecard shows when that page was last checked. The FDA does not announce every approval or label change, so the list is not exhaustive, and approvals outside the US are not included.
What do trial phases mean?
The live list of recruiting studies comes from ClinicalTrials.gov, the registry run by the US National Library of Medicine. Recruiting means the study is enrolling now.
- Phase 1
- Tests safety and the right dose of a new treatment in a small group of people.
- Phase 2
- Checks whether the treatment works against a specific cancer and continues to study safety.
- Phase 3
- Compares the new treatment with the current standard in hundreds or thousands of people. Results usually decide approval.
- Phase 4
- Follows an approved treatment in wider use to learn more about long-term benefits and risks.
A listing is not an endorsement and does not mean someone is eligible. The trials that changed care on each card are selected by ROMbug Bio from published results, dated by their key publication.
Using this information
Figures on this site describe groups of people, not individuals, and they describe people diagnosed years ago. Your own outlook depends on things no population figure can capture: your age and general health, the biology of your tumor, the tests done on it, and how it responds to treatment. Two people in the same group can be in very different positions.
The explorer is for information and education. It is not medical advice. Decisions about screening, diagnosis and treatment should be made with a doctor who knows your situation. Questions about the explorer: support@rombugbio.com.
