40-year trends in an index of survival for all cancers combined and survival adjusted for age and sex for each cancer in England and Wales, 1971–2011: a population-based study

Assessment of progress in cancer control at the population level is increasingly important. Population-based survival trends provide a key insight into the overall effectiveness of the health system, alongside trends in incidence and mortality. For this purpose, we aimed to provide a unique measure of cancer survival. In this observational study, we analysed trends in survival with population-based data for 7·2 million adults diagnosed with a first, primary, invasive malignancy in England and Wales during 1971–2011 and followed up to the end of 2012. We constructed a survival index for all cancers combined using data from the National Cancer Registry and the Welsh Cancer Intelligence and Surveillance Unit. The index is designed to be independent of changes in the age distribution of patients with cancer and of changes in the proportion of lethal cancers in each sex. We analysed trends in the cancer survival index at 1, 5, and 10 years after diagnosis for the selected periods 1971–72, 1980–81, 1990–91, 2000–01, 2005–06, and 2010–11. We also estimated trends in age-sex-adjusted survival for each cancer. We define the difference in net survival between the oldest (75–99 years) and youngest (15–44 years) patients as the age gap in survival. We evaluated the absolute change (%) in the age gap since 1971.

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