structural:summarization, structural:scholar_edition
Prognosis

Cutaneous anthrax is rarely fatal if treated, because the infection area is limited to the skin, preventing the lethal factor, edema factor, and protective antigen from entering and destroying a vital organ. Without treatment, up to 20% of cutaneous skin infection cases progress to toxemia and death.

Before 2001, fatality rates for inhalation anthrax were 90%; since then, they have fallen to 45%. People that progress to the fulminant phase of inhalational anthrax nearly always die, with one case study showing a death rate of 97%. Anthrax meningoencephalitis is also nearly always fatal.

Gastrointestinal anthrax infections can be treated, but usually result in fatality rates of 25% to 60%, depending upon how soon treatment commences.

Injection anthrax is the rarest form of anthrax, and has only been seen to have occurred in a group of heroin injecting drug users.