¹Department of Epidemiology, German Centre for Research on Ageing, Bergheimer Str. 20, D-69115 Heidelberg, Germany

Correspondence: Dr H Brenner, E-mail: brenner@dzfa.uni-heidelberg.de

Received 19 December 2002; Revised 5 March 2003; Accepted 7 March 2003.

Abstract

Survival rates of children with cancer have strongly improved during the past decades, but much of this improvement has been disclosed with substantial delay by traditional methods of survival analysis, which reflect survival experience of patients diagnosed many years ago. In this paper, the use of a new method of survival analysis, denoted period analysis, for providing more up-to-date estimates of 10-year survival curves of children with cancer is empirically evaluated using data of the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results Program of the United States National Cancer Institute. It is shown that period analysis provides much more up-to-date estimates of survival curves than traditional cohort-based survival analysis indeed, at least as long as there is ongoing improvement in survival rates over time, as it seems to be the case for many forms of childhood cancer. The most recent 10-year period survival estimates indicate that survival rates of children with cancer achieved by the end of the 20th century are substantially higher than previously available survival statistics have suggested. Application of period analysis may be particularly useful in the field of childhood cancer as it may help to prevent patients, their families and clinicians from being burdened by outdated, often too pessimistic survival expectations.