3 ms·
Unfortunately a large percentage of this increase has been from detecting early cancers which push out the time to death by pulling back the time of detection -
by danieltillett 10y ago
Unfortunately a large percentage of this increase has been from detecting early cancers which push out the time to death by pulling back the time of detection - we are not having an impact on the course of disease that the numbers would suggest.
I hate 5 year survival as a metric. We should be targeting 10+ years survival (or death from any other cause) as a metric. Five years is just too short a time to know if you have beaten cancer.
- sachingulaya 10y agoFor measuring survival my old lab championed the Kaplan-meier estimator for its ability to censor non-cancer causes of death. The 5yr survival can be heavily skewed if patients are dying from secondary causes such as heart attacks, getting hit by a bus, etc. Oftentimes patients with cancer have other serious comorbidities.
- danieltillett 10y agoExactly. Most people getting cancer are pretty old. Time to death might make sense in paediatric cancers, but not in 80 year olds.
- refurb 10y agoUnfortunately a large percentage of this increase has been from detecting early cancers Do you have a source for that? I've also seen data for stage IV cancers and they show the same improvement. Those weren't caught early.