R Capocaccia

..Comparison of quality indicators for the EUROCARE-3 database with earlier EUROCARE databases indicates that data quality and standardisation have improved...

..Prevalence of cancer is estimated to be 2% on average, with the highest values (3%) in Sweden and the lowest in Eastern Europe, with a minimum of approximately 1% in Poland...

..These favourable trends contribute to the increase in healthy life expectation, thus supporting the idea that we live longer and healthier...

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..While mortality data are currently and exhaustively collected in all developed countries and in a few developing countries, incidence and prevalence are often available only for certain subgroups of the population under study...

..The proportion of cured of all cancers combined is a useful general indicator of cancer control as it reflects progress in diagnosis and treatment, as well as success in the prevention of rapidly fatal cancers...

..Furthermore, we give helpful suggestions to obtain approximate values of the correction factor to be used for ages and periods of observation that are intermediate between the ones presented in this paper...

..About 45,000 prevalent cases were estimated in Italy by 1990, half of which have been diagnosed before 1984...

..The EUROCARE-3 CD-ROM can be ordered free of charge or directly downloaded at http://www.eurocare.it...

..The national estimates of breast cancer survival pattern show a mild decrease of survival with age and a marked increase with period of diagnosis...

..These estimates are useful for planning health services on a national and regional basis and for highlighting regional differences...

..3% were censored alive after less than five years' follow-up. These indicators suggest satisfactory data quality that has improved since EUROCARE-3...

..The marked survival improvements in countries with poor survival may indicate that these countries have made efforts to adopt the new diagnostic procedures and the standardised therapeutic protocols in use in more affluent countries...

..CONCLUSIONS. Using a hypothesis of no more HIV infections after 1990, AIDS counts would be still rising in Italy up to 1993 as a result of past infections and of the long incubation period...

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..Interpretation of marked variation in survival with morphology is complicated by classification inconsistencies. The completeness and standardisation of cancer registry morphology data needs to be improved...

..Population based colorectal cancer survival among patients diagnosed in 1985-89 was lower in Europe than in the USA (45% v 59% five year relative survival)...

..The Italian health care system will also have to cope with growing cancer diagnostic and therapeutic needs due to population ageing...

..To estimate survival in patients in whom uveal melanoma was diagnosed between January 1, 1983, and December 31, 1994, in Europe...

..We estimated the proportions of the prevalent colon cancer cases requiring initial care, terminal care and follow-up...

..The affluence of countries influenced overall cancer survival through the availability of adequate diagnostic and treatment procedures, and screening programmes...

..However, sufficiently detailed mortality data are not available for all areas covered by the cancer registries (CRs) participating in the EUROCARE-3 study...

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..The main explanatory difference is the proportion of adenocarcinoma in polyps...

..Information on cancer prevalence is of major importance for health planning and resource allocation. However, systematic information on cancer prevalence is largely unavailable...

..There was statistically significant effect related to the period of diagnosis, with a 50% reduction in the relative risk (RR) for children diagnosed in 1986--1989 compared with those diagnosed in 1978-1981...

..In 1987, about 250,000 Italian women had a present or past history of breast cancer: for the 1970-1987 period, prevalence has increased by approximately 5,500 cases per year...