(NYT) – Thanks to new treatments, some patients with the disease are living longer — leaving them in limbo for years.

Twenty years ago, the words “Stage 4” almost invariably meant “end of life.” A cancer had spread far from where it formed, attacking distant parts of the body and often making treatment impossible. For some, that remains true today. But for a growing number of people, a Stage 4 diagnosis is not the immediate death sentence it once was.

New therapies that target specific genes and parts of the immune system, as well as new regimens of existing cancer drugs, have given many patients far longer than the handful of months they might have once hoped for. More than a third of people diagnosed with metastatic disease now live for at least five years, compared with 17 percent in the 1990s, according to the American Cancer Society. (Read More)