Long-term survival expectations of cancer patients in Europe in 2000–2002
Introduction
The EUROCARE project has set the stage for monitoring and comparing cancer survival across European countries, and its findings have been very influential in development and promotion of national cancer plans.1, 2 A major limitation has been, however, that survival figures pertained to patients who were diagnosed and treated many years ago, and thus did not reflect more recent developments, especially possible developments resulting from the latest therapeutic innovations, economic developments or enhanced cancer plans. For example, the EUROCARE-3 results, published in 2003, pertained to patients diagnosed and treated up to 1994 only.3 The EUROCARE-4 study implemented, for the first time, additional survival analyses by the so-called period method for a subset of cancer registries, which extends estimates of survival for cancer patients in 2000–2002. Period analysis, which was first proposed in 1996,5 provides more up-to-date long-term survival estimates by exclusively considering survival experience of cancer patients in a recent calendar period.6, 7, 8, 9 Key findings obtained with the 2000–2002 period analysis have recently been reported in a first summary article.10 Here, we provide results of more detailed period analyses by age, sex and European country for selected cancer sites, and we also provide most up-to-date age adjusted 1-, 5- and 10-year pan-European period survival estimates for all 45 cancer sites included in the EUROCARE-4 study.
Section snippets
Database and data quality
This analysis was restricted to adulthood cancer, i.e. to patients aged 15–99 years at the time of diagnosis, and to the subset of registries included in the EUROCARE-4 period analysis study. The 47 cancer registries included in this substudy, as well as indicators of data quality and completeness of these registries have previously been described in detail.10 Period estimates of 5-year survival for the 2000–2002 calendar period could be derived from all 47 registries. Derivation of period
Results
Five-year relative survival of patients with stomach cancer ranged from 33% in Germany to 17% in England and Scotland (Table 2a). Five-year relative survival also exceeded 30% in Austria, Belgium, Italy and Spain, and it was close to or below 20% in the Netherlands, the UK and Ireland and all populations from Eastern Europe included in this analysis. Intermediate levels between 20% and 30% were seen in the North European countries, France, Switzerland and Slovenia. Ten-year relative survival
Discussion
In this article, we provide, for the first time, a detailed comparative analysis of cancer survival by age and sex between European countries, using the period analysis methodology. We thereby extend a previous summary report that had exclusively reported overall 5-year period survival in 2000–2002 in the European countries for a selection of cancer sites and overall trends (all ages and sexes combined) in cancer survival for Europe as a whole.10 In addition to age- and sex-specific estimates
Conflict of interest statement
None declared.
EUROCARE-4 Working Group
Austria: W Oberaigner (Tyrol Cancer Registry); M Hackl (Austrian National Cancer Registry); Belgium: E Van Eycken; Martine Verstreken (Flemish Cancer Registry), Czech Republic: J Holub, L Jurickova (West Bohemia Cancer Registry); Denmark: HH Storm; G Engholm (Danish Cancer Society, Dept. Cancer Prevention & Documentation); Finland: T Hakulinen (Finnish Cancer Registry); France: A Belot (FRANCIM); G Hédelin, M Velten (Bas-Rhin Cancer Registry); I Tron, E Le Gall (Bretagne Childhood Cancer
Acknowledgement
The EUROCARE-4 project was supported by the Compagnia di S Paolo di Torino.
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