Sidney J. Cutler

MAXIMUM UTILIZATION OF THE LIFE TABLE METHOD IN ANALYZING SURVIVAL

Measurement of patient survival is necessary for the evaluation of treatment of usually fatal chronic diseases. This is particularly true for cancer. The American College of Surgeons, recognizing this, requires the maintenance of a cancer case registration and follow-up program for approval of a hospital cancer program [1], Acceptance of survival as a criterion for measuring the effectiveness of cancer therapy is also attested to by the very large number of papers published every year reporting on the survival experience of cancer patients.

Some Observations on the Incidence of Thyroid Cancer in the United States

THE present report is prompted by the absence in the medical literature of reliable data on the risk of papillary and nonpapillary cancer of the thyroid gland and on sex, age and geographic region ...

Mammary cancer trends

There has been little change in the mammary cancer mortality rates in the U.S.A. for the past 30 years. Connecticut and California statistics show increasing incidence balanced by decreasing mortality primarily among women less than 55 years of age. Reliable statistics are not available for the U.S. as a whole. Based on the experience of more than 50000 cases of breast cancer for patients with localized disease the 5-year survival rate increased from 78 percent to 83 percent from the 1940s to the 1955-1959 period; for patients with regional spread that 5-year survival rate increased from 42 percent to 52 percent in the same period. Use of adjuvant therapy radiation chemotherapy hormones and surgery had increased. A special study of 1342 cases of women under 65 reported on in Cardiff Wales in 1967 showed the greater mortality among those with pathologically positive axillary nodes. Many palpable axillary nodes were found to be pathologically negative and some not palpable were positive. Data suggest that improvement in survival may be due to the extent of the disease at time of treatment.

SURVIVAL IN UNTREATED AND TREATED CANCER

Excerpt The most obvious manifestation of cancer is that it kills. In 1878 Winiwarter1published a detailed analysis of Billroths surgical experience in cancer. Approximately 10% of 548 patients we...

Improvements in Cancer Survival Rates

THE Cancer Control Program in Connecticut is a Cooperative venture conducted by four organizations: the Connecticut State Medical Society; the Association of Connecticut Tumor Clinics; the Connecti...

Cancer in the aged

The management of cancer in aged per sons is a problem of increasing impor tance. Information from the State of Con necticut, which registers virtually every diagnosed case of cancer, reveals that the number of cancer patients who were 75 years of age or older at diagnosis in creased from 1,221 during the five-year period 1935-1939 to 4,993 in 1950-1954, a 300 per cent increase. During the same period, the number of cancer patients in creased by 150 per cent and the state pop ulation increased l)y 50 Per cent. The percentage of cancer diagnoses that were microscopically confirmed pro vides a rough index of the quality of medi cal care. This index reveals definite im provement. The percentage of confirmed diagnoses among cancer patients 75 years of age and older increased from 57 per DR. CUTLER