Abstract:
A few years ago, a new method of survival analysis, denoted period analysis, has been
developed to derive more up-to-date estimates of long-term survival rates of cancer
patients, but this method has rarely been applied so far. Using empirical examples
from the Saarland Cancer Registry, we illustrate how seriously traditional long-term
survival estimates may lag behind survival expectations of newly diagnosed cancer
patients in the case of recent improvement in prognosis, and to what extent this problem
may be reduced by period analysis of survival. We conclude that period analysis should
be more widely used for deriving more up-to-date long-term survival estimates.
Keywords:
Cancer Registries - Epidemiological Methods - Survival