Another international study confirmed longer survival of Czech cancer patients

Estimates of 5-year survival rates of 25.7 million cancer patients, who had been diagnosed with one of 10 common cancers between 1995 and 2009, have just been published in The Lancet [1]. The CONCORD-2 study analysed data on individual patients from 279 cancer registries in 67 countries.

The Czech Republic was also involved in the study, having provided data from the Czech National Cancer Registry [2]. Five-year survival rates of ten most common cancer types from periods 1995–1999, 2000–2004 and 2005–2009, as published in the study, can be compared within individual countries and among different countries. The following conclusions can be made for the Czech Republic:

• Since 1995, five-year survival rates have increased in all evaluated diagnoses. This trend is observed in all developed European countries.
• Five-year survival of Czech patients with colon cancer (55%) and rectal cancer (50%) is slightly better than in Slovakia (50% and 44%) and Poland (50% and 47%). However, the Czech Republic does not achieve very good results when compared to developed Central and West European countries (Austria: 63% and 62%, Germany: 65% and 62%, the Netherlands: 60% and 62%).
• The period 1995–2009 has seen as significant increase in 5-year survival of Czech women patients with breast cancer: while it was below 73% in the period 1995–1999, it grew to almost 78% between 2000 and 2004, and up to 80% in the period 2005–2009. In this regard, the Czech Republic achieves much better results than other East European countries, whose 5-year survival rates for breast cancer in the period 2005–2009 were below 75% (Slovakia: 72%, Poland: 74%).
• Five-year survival rates of cervical cancer patients in the Czech Republic increased by several per cent in the monitored period between 1995 and 2009 (1995–1999: 61%; 2000-2004: 62%; 2005–2009: almost 65 %), and approximately corresponds to values achieved between 2005 and 2009 in developed Central and West European Countries (Austria: 66%, Germany: 65%, the Netherlands: almost 67 %). In this respect, the Czech Republic has better results than Slovakia (59%), Poland (53%) and the United Kingdom (60%), for example.
• Over the monitored period, 5-year survival rates of Czech prostate patients have improved significantly: while it reached only about 65% in the period 1995–1999, it grew to 83% in the period 2005–2009, leaving the Czech Republic closely behind developed West European countries (Austria and Germany: approximately 91%, the Netherlands: 86 %, the United Kingdom: 83%), and is far beyond the average of other post-communist countries (Slovakia: 66%, Poland: 74%).

Table 1 provides a comparison of 5-year survival rates of cancer patients diagnosed with one of 10 common cancers in the Czech Republic and several other European countries, including those neighbouring with the Czech Republic.

The CONCORD-2 study has confirmed previously published findings of the EUROCARE-5 study [3], which evaluated 5-year survival rates of cancer patients in Europe, and concluded that the Czech Republic significantly exceeds the Eastern European average in this regard. Authors of the CONCORD-2 study have also made a similar conclusion to that by Pavlik et al. [4], stating that survival rates of Czech cancer patients have seen statistically significant improvements in all evaluated diagnoses over the last decade.

Table 1: Five-year age-standardised net survival for adult cancer patients (aged 15–99 years) who had been diagnosed with one of ten common cancers between 1995 and 2009. Comparison of the Czech Republic with neighbouring countries (Austria, Slovakia, Poland, Germany) and two West European countries (the Netherlands, the United Kingdom). Source: CONCORD-2 study [1].

References

1. Allemani C, Weir HK, Carreira H, et al. Global surveillance of cancer survival 1995-2009: analysis of individual data for 25 676 887 patients from 279 population-based registries in 67 countries (CONCORD-2). Lancet. 2014. doi: 10.1016/S0140-6736(14)62038-9 [Epub ahead of print]
2. Institute of Health Information and Statistics of the Czech Republic: Czech National Cancer Registry (CNCR) [5. 12. 2014]. Available from WWW: http://www.uzis.cz/registry-nzis/nor
3. De Angelis R, Sant M, Coleman MP, Francisci S, Baili P, Pierannunzio D, et al. EUROCARE-5 Working Group. Cancer survival in Europe 1999-2007 by country and age: results of EUROCARE--5-a population-based study. Lancet Oncol 2014 Jan;15(1):23-34. doi: 10.1016/S1470-2045(13)70546-1
4. Pavlík T, Májek O, Büchler T, Vyzula R, Petera J, Ryska M, Ryška A, Cibula D, Babjuk M, Abrahámová J, Vorlíček J, Mužík J, Dušek L. Trends in stage-specific population-based survival of cancer patients in the Czech Republic in the period 2000-2008. Cancer Epidemiol 2014; 38(1):28-34. doi: 10.1016/j.canep.2013.11.002

5. 12. 2014 IBA MU

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