Cancer Patient Survival: Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results Program, 1973–79

Data from the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) Program of the National Cancer Institute were used in the evaluation of cancer patient survival experience for almost 10% of the U.S. population. This first report contains actuarial (life table) survival analysis on 368,263 patients with first primary cancer diagnosed in 1973-79 from nine SEER areas: the entire States of Connecticut, Iowa, New Mexico, Utah, and Hawaii and the metropolitan areas of Atlanta, Detroit, San Francisco, and Seattle. Both observed and relative survival rates were shown for whites and blacks, sex, age, primary site, and time period (each yr, 1973-78). The largest racial difference in survival was for cancer of the corpus uteri: 87% 5-year relative survival rate for white females versus only 54% for black females. Survival rates varied considerably by primary site. For most sites, as age increased the relative and observed survival rates decreased. Analysis of relative survival rates by ech year of diagnosis, 1973-78, and for each year following diagnosis suggested increasing rates for cancers of the colon, lung, and prostate gland, whereas there were no definite increases for cancers of the female breast and corpus uteri. A dramatic increase in survival from acute lymphocytic leukemia was found for children under 15 years of age, with the 4-year relative survival rate increasing from 51% among those diagnosed in 1973-75 to 65% for those diagnosed in 1976-78.