Cancer cure for 32 cancer types: results from the EUROCARE-5 study
Luigino Dal Maso, Chiara Panato, Andrea Tavilla, Stefano Guzzinati, Diego Serraino, Sandra Mallone, Laura Botta, Olayidé Boussari, Riccardo Capocaccia, Marc Colonna, Emanuele Crocetti, Agnès Dumas, T Dyba, Silvia Franceschi, Gemma Gatta, Anna Gigli, Francesco Giusti, Valérie Jooste, Pamela Minicozzi, Luciana Neamţiu, Gaëlle Romain, Manuel Zorzi, Roberta De Angelis, Silvia Francisci, the EUROCARE-5 Working Group
Abstract
BACKGROUND: Few studies have estimated the probability of being cured for cancer patients. This study aims to estimate population-based indicators of cancer cure in Europe by type, sex, age and period. METHODS: 7.2 million cancer patients (42 population-based cancer registries in 17 European countries) diagnosed at ages 15-74 years in 1990-2007 with follow-up to 2008 were selected from the EUROCARE-5 dataset. Mixture-cure models were used to estimate: (i) life expectancy of fatal cases (LEF); (ii) cure fraction (CF) as proportion of patients with same death rates as the general population; (iii) time to cure (TTC) as time to reach 5-year conditional relative survival (CRS) >95%. RESULTS: LEF ranged from 10 years for chronic lymphocytic leukaemia patients to <6 months for those with liver, pancreas, brain, gallbladder and lung cancers. It was 7.7 years for patients with prostate cancer at age 65-74 years and >5 years for women with breast cancer. The CF was 94% for testis, 87% for thyroid cancer in women and 70% in men, 86% for skin melanoma in women and 76% in men, 66% for breast, 63% for prostate and <10% for liver, lung and pancreatic cancers. TTC was <5 years for testis and thyroid cancer patients diagnosed below age 55 years, and <10 years for stomach, colorectal, corpus uteri and melanoma patients of all ages. For breast and prostate cancers, a small excess (CRS < 95%) remained for at least 15 years. CONCLUSIONS: Estimates from this analysis should help to reduce unneeded medicalization and costs. They represent an opportunity to improve patients' quality of life.