Understanding Overall Survival 

How Progression-Free Survival and Overall Survival Are Different

What Overall Survival Really Means

Improved overall survival is a promising result that some women with HR+, HER2- metastatic breast cancer (mBC) are seeing in clinical trials, so it's important to understand what exactly the term means. Watch the video below to learn about the significance of overall survival (OS) and progression-free survival (PFS)—2 very important terms with very different meanings.

mBC Treatments Have 2 Goals:

Overall Survival  Overall Survival 

This is the total time living with mBC. It’s about adding more days to a person’s life.

 

OTHER WAYS TO DESCRIBE OVERALL SURVIVAL

  • Live longer

  • More time to live

  • A chance to live longer

Progression Free Survival   Progression-Free Survival 

This is the amount of time cancer doesn’t grow or spread while on treatment. It’s about putting cancer growth on pause.

 

OTHER WAYS TO DESCRIBE PROGRESSION-FREE SURVIVAL

  • Live longer without disease progression

  • Live longer without your cancer getting worse

  • More time without disease progression

OS-explanation-graph