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The first question after a diagnosis is usually what the next year looks like. These timelines lay out the typical sequence for a cancer at a stage: tests, treatment before and after surgery, radiotherapy, long-term tablets and follow-up, with the decision points where the plan forks. Durations come from the trial protocols and guidelines named on each page; your own plan will differ.
About a year of active treatment: chemotherapy with immunotherapy before surgery, surgery, then immunotherapy for nine more cycles, with radiotherapy alongside, followed by five years of check-ups.
Surgery first, a genomic test to decide whether chemotherapy adds anything, a few weeks of radiotherapy, then five to ten years of endocrine tablets, with a CDK4/6 inhibitor for two or three years if the risk is high.
Chemotherapy with two HER2 antibodies for about four months before surgery; what the surgeon finds decides the next year of anti-HER2 treatment (antibodies alone, or the ADC T-DM1 if cancer remained).
Molecular testing splits the road: without a driver mutation, chemo-immunotherapy comes before surgery and immunotherapy after; with an EGFR or ALK alteration, surgery is followed by a targeted tablet for two to three years.
Surgery to remove the tumour and its nodes, then three or six months of chemotherapy depending on risk, and five years of follow-up with blood tests, scans and a colonoscopy.
Radiotherapy with two to three years of hormone therapy (sometimes with abiraterone), or surgery, after a PSMA PET scan has shown the cancer has not spread; then PSA checks for life.
Six cycles of immunochemotherapy over about four months, a PET scan to confirm the lymphoma has gone, then two years of close follow-up; if it comes back early, CAR-T cell therapy is the next step.
Surgery within days, six weeks of daily radiotherapy with temozolomide tablets, a month off, then six monthly cycles of temozolomide (with the option of a scalp device), and an MRI every two to three months.
A major operation, two to three months to recover, then six months of combination chemotherapy, which roughly doubled the time patients stay cancer-free in the trial that set the standard.
Surgery to remove the melanoma and the involved nodes, then a year of immunotherapy infusions every few weeks, or immunotherapy for six weeks before surgery, followed by scans for five years.
Four to six months of a four-drug combination, a stem cell transplant with a hospital stay of a few weeks, two more cycles, then maintenance tablets that continue for years while the disease is monitored down to a few cells in a million.
Pathology review and staging scans over a few weeks, a second operation at a liver centre about four to eight weeks after the first, two to three months to recover, six months of capecitabine tablets, then five years of check-ups.