European journal of cancer : official journal for European Organization for Research and Treatment of Cancer (EORTC) [and] European Association for Cancer Research (EACR)
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This introduction provides a general overview of the aims, methods and procedures used in the EUROCARE II study and the types of analyses presented in each article of this Special Issue of the European Journal of Cancer. The main aims of the EUROCARE II project are the updating of the survival database of the European Cancer Registries, the study of recent trends in relative survival rates and the interpretation of the survival differences observed both in time and across populations. Once having completed the preliminary stage of data checking, a total of 3,473,659 individual records from patients of all cancer sites, diagnosed between 1978 and 1989 and provided by 45 cancer registries in 17 European countries were accepted to build up the EUROCARE database. ⋯ Statistical analysis was based on age-specific relative survival rates, computed for each cancer sites as the ratio of observed survival to the expected survival of the general population of the same area, gender and age, according to the Hakulinen method. An estimate of the European survival was computed as a weighted mean of the corresponding survival of the different countries, using as weights the expected yearly number of incident cases in each country. For comparison purposes, age-standardised survival was also calculated for Europe and for each country involved in the study.
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Data on 73,070 patients for seven major haematological malignancies diagnosed in Europe between 1985 and 1989 from 39 population-based cancer registries in 17 countries are included in the EUROCARE database. Relative survival was analysed by country and age between 1985 and 1989 and time trends were analysed from 1978-1989 for 13 countries which collaborated in EUROCARE for this entire period. The European weighted age-standardised 5-year relative survival rate was 72% for patients with Hodgkin's disease (HD, ranging from 45 to 76% in 13 countries), 63% for chronic lymphocytic leukaemia (CLL, range 51-79%, 14 countries), 46% for patients with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma (NHL, range 25-63%, 17 countries), 31% for patients with chronic myelocytic leukaemia (CML, range 8-40%, 13 countries), 28% for patients with multiple myeloma (MM, range 18-36%, 14 countries), 25% for patients with acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (ALL, range 19-33%, 7 countries) and 10% for patients with acute myeloblastic leukaemia (AML, range 4-15%, 11 countries). ⋯ Compared with 1978-1979, relative 5-year survival improved in 1987-1989 for most haematological malignancies (relative risk (RR) of death for CLL 0.65, AML 0.75, HD 0.76, ALL 0.79, NHL 0.82), with only CML (RR 0.95) and MM (RR 1.00) showing little or no change. These results suggest that generally and particularly in Eastern Europe there is room for improvement in the diagnosis and treatment of haematological malignancies. The intercountry differences also highlight the importance of socio-economic conditions to health status.