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New therapeutic options have led to substantial increases in survival expectations of younger patients with multiple myeloma in recent years. In the past, the impact of these innovations on long-term survival has been disclosed only with substantial delay. We aimed to derive up-to-date estimates of long-term survival expectations of concurrently diagnosed multiple myeloma patients. Using data from the 1973-2005 database of the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) Program, we employed a novel model-based projection method to project 5-and 10-year relative survival expectations of multiple myeloma patients in the United States diagnosed in 2006-2010. Preliminary empirical evaluation of the method using historical data indicated good performance. Projected 5-year relative survival for patients diagnosed in 2006-2010 below 45 years of age is 68.0%, which exceeds the most up-to-date estimates obtained from traditional cohort and period analysis by 15.5 and 7.0 percent units respectively. Ten-year relative survival projection for patients in this age group is 55.3%, exceeding the most up-to-date estimates from traditional cohort and period analysis by 19.7 and 7.4 percent units respectively. By contrast, survival projections remain much lower and hardly exceed estimates from traditional survival analysis for older patients. Patients diagnosed with multiple myeloma in 2006-2010, especially those diagnosed at younger ages, are expected to have much higher long-term survival perspectives than suggested by previously available survival statistics.
Brenner et al. (Wed,) studied this question.