1. ¹Department of Epidemiology, German Centre for Research on Ageing, Bergheimer Strasse 20, D-69115 Heidelberg, Germany
2. ²Finnish Cancer Registry, Institute for Statistical and Epidemiological Cancer Research, Liisankatu 21 B, FIN-00170 Helsinki, Finland

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

Received 6 April 2005; Revised 23 May 2005; Accepted 10 June 2005; Published online 19 July 2005.

Abstract

We empirically evaluated the performance of a new method for age adjustment of cancer survival compared to traditional age adjustment using data from the Finnish Cancer Registry. We find that both methods provide almost identical results for absolute survival but the new method generally provides more meaningful estimates of relative survival with often a smaller standard error.