The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 269 No 7219 p513
12 October 2002

This article
Reprint
Photocopy

News summary

Related websites
The Lancet (www.thelancet.com)

Cancer survival estimates too low

Conventional estimates for life expectancy after cancer diagnosis have been too pessimistic, say researchers (Lancet 2002;360;1131). Hermann Brenner from the German centre for research on ageing in Heidelberg, used two different methods to quantify survival estimates using data from the United States population based cancer registries.

The conventional cohort method (based on the survival experience of cancer patients whose diagnosis occurred many years ago) resulted in estimates that were between 1 per cent and 11 per cent lower than those quantified using period analysis (which uses survival data from a specific time period).