Andersson Therese M-L, Rutherford Mark J, Myklebust Tor Åge, Møller Bjørn, Arnold Melina, Soerjomataram Isabelle, Bray Freddie, Elkader Hazem Abd, Engholm Gerda, Huws Dyfed, Little Alana, Shack Lorraine, Walsh Paul M, Woods Ryan R, Parkin D Maxwell, Lambert Paul C
Department of Medical Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden.
Department of Health Sciences, University of Leicester, Leicester, United Kingdom; Cancer Surveillance Branch, International Agency for Research on Cancer, Lyon, France.
Cancer Epidemiol. 2022 Feb;76:102085. doi: 10.1016/j.canep.2021.102085. Epub 2021 Dec 24.
Accurately recorded vital status of individuals is essential when estimating cancer patient survival. When deaths are ascertained by linkage with vital statistics registers, some may be missed, and such individuals will wrongly appear to be long-term survivors, and survival will be overestimated. Interval-specific relative survival that levels off above one indicates that the survival among the cancer patients is better than expected, which could be due to the presence of immortals.
We included colon cancer cases diagnosed in 1995-1999 within the 19 jurisdictions in seven countries participating in ICBP SURVMARK-2, with follow-up information available until end-2015. Interval-specific relative survival was estimated for each year following diagnosis, by country and age group at diagnosis.
The interval-specific relative survival levels off at 1 for all countries and age groups, with two exceptions: for the age group diagnosed at age 75 years and above in Ireland, and, to a lesser extent, in New Zealand.
Overall, a subset of immortals are not apparent in the early years within the ICBP SURVMARK-2 study, except for possibly in Ireland. We suggest this approach as one strategy of exploring the existence of immortals, and to be part of routine checks of cancer registry data.
在估计癌症患者生存率时，准确记录个体的生命状态至关重要。当通过与生命统计登记处的数据关联来确定死亡情况时，可能会遗漏一些死亡信息，这些个体将被错误地视为长期幸存者，从而高估生存率。特定间隔相对生存率超过1表明癌症患者的生存率高于预期，这可能是由于存在“不朽者”。
我们纳入了参与ICBP SURVMARK-2研究的7个国家19个司法管辖区内1995 - 1999年诊断的结肠癌病例，并获取了截至2015年底的随访信息。按诊断后的年份、国家和诊断时的年龄组估计特定间隔相对生存率。
除两个例外情况外，所有国家和年龄组的特定间隔相对生存率均在1处趋于平稳：爱尔兰75岁及以上年龄组，新西兰的程度稍轻。
总体而言，在ICBP SURVMARK-2研究的早期，除爱尔兰可能存在外，“不朽者”的一个子集并不明显。我们建议将这种方法作为探索“不朽者”存在的一种策略，并作为癌症登记数据常规检查的一部分。
