The latest report from the National Institute for Public Health Surveillance confirms the trend observed in Europe: in France as in the rest of Europe, we survive cancer a little better.
The BEH notably evaluated the net 5-year survival rate for cancers. This expression designates “the survival which would be observed if the only possible cause of death were the cancer studied”. To estimate it, the analysis focused on 427,000 tumors diagnosed between 1989 and 2004 in patients over 15 years old, in 12 French departments.
The results show an increase in net 5-year survival for most cancers. The biggest increase observed concerns the 5-year survival of prostate cancer: it went from 71 to 90%. This improvement is attributed to a “major anticipation of diagnoses due to individual screening by blood PSA assay”.
Different interpretations depending on the cancer
Anticipation of diagnosis and early treatment can also partly explain the progress observed in breast cancer. Its 5-year survival rate has increased from 80 to 87%. Same advances for cancers of the thyroid (86% to 94%), kidney (59% to 68% in women, 59% to 70% in men), colon-rectum (56% to 61% in women, 53% to 58% in men), specifies the BEH.
These “encouraging” developments provide an important indicator of the cancer mortality, concludes the BEH. But they must be interpreted cautiously “with regard to the different mechanisms that can lengthen survival” and which do not play the same role from one cancer to another (differences in therapeutic progress, diagnoses, change in the definition of diseases, etc. ).
