Do you know anyone who has been effected?
This week marks Sarcoma Awareness Week and Sarcoma UK, the bone and soft tissue cancer charity, is aiming to raise awareness of the condition through a new patient campaign called Sarcoma Voices.
Sarcomas are rare cancers that develop in the muscle, bone, nerves, cartilage, tendons, blood vessels and the fatty and fibrous tissues.
In fact, it is so rare that sarcomas make up only 1% of all cancers diagnoses in the UK but this doesn’t make the condition any less devastating for the thousands of people living with it across the country.
Sarcoma UK is hoping to raise awareness of the condition and empower patients to tell their personal stories living with the condition.
In total there are around 100 different sub-types of sarcoma, each of which can be very difficult to diagnose. Currently there are only 12,000 people living with sarcoma in the UK and there are around 3,800 new cases of sarcoma diagnosed each year in the UK.
In general, patients with a bone or soft tissue diagnosis tend to be younger than the majority of cancer patients.
In fact 16% of bone or soft tissue sarcomas are diagnosed in patients less than thirty years of age, compared to around 2% of all cancers. In addition the five-year relative survival rate for all sarcomas is approximately 55%.
Join the awareness campaign and upload your image and share your story to help shine light on this.
Sarcoma UK provides information and support for anyone affected by sarcoma, whether that be patients, carers, family and friends. For more information please visit www.sarcomavoices.org.uk