Survival of cancer patients in Spain has been increasing over the years. Estimates suggest that it has doubled in the last four decades and, although slowly, it is expected to continue to increase in the coming years as a result of advances in medicine that allow better treatment of the disease. Specifically, between 2008 and 2013 survival among patients under 75 years of age is 4.5 points higher than in the period between 2002 and 2007.
The report of the Spanish Society of Medical Oncology (SEOM) presented this Monday shows that, in general, cancer mortality in Spain has experienced a sharp decline, although this is not uniform in all tumors or by sex.
In overall figures, the net five-year survival from diagnosis among patients in the period 2008-2013 in Spain was 55.3% in men and 61.7% in women. However, this difference is not due to sex as such, according to SEOM, but would probably be determined by the fact that certain tumors are more frequent in one sex than in another, since the most important differences in survival are due to tumor type.
Survival by type of cancer
In this sense, and taking into account the net survival standardized by age, in men it was 90% in prostate and testicular cancers and of 86% in the thyroid; while the rate barely reaches the 7% in pancreatic cancer, 12% in lung cancer13% in the esophagus and 18% in the liver.
In the case of women, breast cancer thyroid gland is the one that achieves the highest survival rates, with 93%the 89% cutaneous melanoma, and breast cancer 86%; while in cancer pancreas was 10%, in liver and esophagus 16% and in lung 18%.
The study divides the survival cases between those over 75 years of age and those under the age of 75. In this second group there is no type of cancer that has decreased the survival rate, although the most notable changes occur in chronic myeloid leukemia, whose survival has increased by 8.8 points in the period 2008-2013 compared to the period 2002-2007, going from 75% to 83.3% survival.
Also significant is the increased survival in myeloma by 7.2 pointsyes -from 49.1 to 56.3%-; colon cancer in 6 points -from 63% to 68.9%-; non-Hodgkin lymphoma, in 5.8 points, kidney and rectum, with 5.5 more points of survival. Compared with the two periods, survival has increased by an average of 4.5% in all types of cancer, contrary to the group over 75 years of age.
Survival has barely changed in this age group, but the comparison is negative in the most recent period with a 0.1% less average survival in all cancers. Although the greatest advances in survival have been registered in testicular and thyroid cancer and acute lymphoid leukemia -27%, 16.6% and 12.2%, respectively-; Negative figures have been registered in chronic lymphoid leukemia, uterus or Hodgkin’s lymphoma – all of them around 4.5% less.
The president of SEOM has assured in the presentation of this study that “survival is being improved, we are in an era of Precision Medicine, we have immunotherapy strategies and the multidisciplinary approach is key”. For his part, the secretary of the Board of Directors of SEOM, Dr. Javier de Castro, agreed that “in recent years we have been increasing the power to cure and greatly improving the quality of life of patients, since we are working on the entire spectrum of care.