Net survival vs relative survival

Many people want to know their chance of surviving after a diagnosis of cancer. Your doctor is the best person to ask.

Federal government websites often end in. The site is secure. Both are valid methodologies for estimating net survival and are used widely in medical research. Discrepancies between estimates obtained from CSS and RS methods varied with cancer site and age, but not by sex. Net survival percent differences were small in children and adolescents and young adults, and large in adults over the age of While both CSS and RS aim to quantify net survival, the estimates tend to differ due to the biases present in both methodologies. Error when estimating CSS most frequently stems from misclassification of cause of death, whereas RS is subject to error when no suitable life tables are available.

Net survival vs relative survival

Thank you for visiting nature. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer. In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript. Cause-specific and relative survival estimates differ. We aimed to examine these differences in common cancers where by possible identifying the most plausible sources of error in each estimate. Ten-year cause-specific and relative survival were estimated for lung, breast, prostate, ovary, oesophagus and colorectal cancers. The cause-specific survival was corrected for misclassification of cause of death. The Pohar-Perme relative survival estimator was modified by 1 correcting for differences in deaths from ischaemic heart disease IHD between cancers and general population; or 2 correcting the population hazard for smoking lung cancer only. For all cancers except breast and prostate, relative survival was lower than cause-specific. Correction for published error rates in cause of death gave implausible results. Correction for rates of IHD death gave slightly different relative survival estimates for lung, oesophagus and colorectal cancers. For lung cancer, when the population hazard was inflated for smoking, survival estimates were increased. Results agreed with the consensus that relative survival is usually preferable.

Cancer Causes Control. For example, between regions [ 1 ], socio-economic groups [ 2 ] or calendar periods [ 3 ]. Net survival has traditionally been estimated using relative survival; the ratio of all-cause survival to expected survival.

Net cancer-specific survival and crude probability of death have two methods in which they can be estimated: using cause of death information or expected survival tables. When using cause of death information, there has been much debate over what is the right endpoint. If death certification were perfect, one would just use the specific form of cancer as the endpoint. However, if a cancer metastasizes, there are instances where the death certificate incorrectly lists the underlying cause of death as the metastatic site. In this instance, it may be best to use all cancers as the end point, especially if the patient only has one cancer. Work is ongoing to define more sophisticated algorithms for defining endpoints based on common sites of metastases for each cancer. Regardless of whether one uses an approach which utilizes cause of death or expected lifetables, careful consideration should be given to exclusions from the analysis.

Thank you for visiting nature. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer. In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript. Cause-specific and relative survival estimates differ.

Net survival vs relative survival

Federal government websites often end in. The site is secure. Survival statistics are of great interest to patients, clinicians, researchers, and policy makers. Although seemingly simple, survival can be confusing: there are many different survival measures with a plethora of names and statistical methods developed to answer different questions. This paper aims to describe and disseminate different survival measures and their interpretation in less technical language. In addition, we introduce templates to summarize cancer survival statistic organized by their specific purpose: research and policy versus prognosis and clinical decision making. Although a seemingly simple concept, survival can be confusing: there are many different survival measures with a plethora of names and statistical methods developed to answer different questions. Because most of the work has been published in technical journals, clinicians and members of the public may not appreciate the many cancer survival statistics available and how to interpret them. However, relative survival—also called net survival—represents the net effect of a cancer diagnosis, that is, the chances of surviving assuming that cancer is the only possible cause of death.

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There are other types of survival statistics that are used more often by researchers who are reporting results of clinical trials looking at new treatments for cancer. For the four youngest age groups there is negligible bias and broad agreement for all methods data not shown. Rates were substantially lower than the general population for prostate cancer cases and slightly lower for breast cancer. Appropriate use of CSS and RS requires a detailed understanding of the characteristics of the disease that may lead to differences in the estimates generated by these methods. These are some important prognostic factors related to the cancer: the type of cancer the subtype of cancer based on the type of cells or tissue histology the size of the tumour how far and where the cancer has spread stage how fast the cancer cells are growing grade. Relative survival was calculated as a ratio of observed to expected survival in the past. For colorectal cancer, it results in an estimated survival considerably lower than both relative and cause-specific survival. Abstract Background Cause-specific and relative survival estimates differ. Ellis, L. The stage variable was only available for a few of the sites starting from the year , so CSS and RS estimates were only compared by stage at lung and bronchus and breast from to Article Google Scholar Turner, E. Cancer Med. No strong pattern was noted between percent difference and sex. Public Health England is a UK government body. Avoidance of premature death: a new definition for the proportion cured.

Federal government websites often end in. The site is secure.

Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:. For lung and ovarian cancers, the resulting estimates were clearly overcorrections, since they gave survival estimates lower than the overall survival. Brain and other nervous system malignant. Advanced search. Measuring cancer survival in populations: relative survival vs cancer-specific survival. A possible approach to correcting relative survival is to consider that for some cancers, for example, lung, the cases are characterised by high rates of smoking which is also a risk factor for other cancers and non-malignant chronic diseases. Presentation Templates for Summarizing Cancer and Actual Prognosis Measures We developed a presentation template to summarize measures of cancer prognosis and actual prognosis. The two commonly used methods to estimate cancer prognosis, relative survival 2 , 3 and cause-specific survival 4 , are described here. Net survival represents how likely it is to survive cancer in the absence of other causes of death. On standardized relative survival. To further adjust for deprivation, we used updated life tables from the Office for National Statistics and Public Health England. For example, the high false positive rates for lung cancer reported by Horeweg et al and Yousaf-Khan et al were based on 8 and 36 deaths respectively. This can be done by calculating the average or marginal survival.