Relative survival (RS) estimates are widely used by cancer registries, mainly because they do not rely on the well-documented deficiencies of cause of death information. The aim of our study was to compare 5-year cause-specific survival (CSS) estimates and 5-year RS estimates for different cancer sites by age and time since diagnosis, and discuss possible reasons for observed differences. Using data from the Cancer Registry of Norway, we identified 200,008 patients diagnosed with cancer at one of the 48 sites included in this analysis during the period 1996-2005, and followed them up until the end of 2010. CSS estimates were calculated (i) considering cause of death to be the cancer that was originally diagnosed and (ii) considering the cause of death to be a cancer within the same organ system. For most cancer sites the difference between CSS and RS estimates was small (
How Many Deaths from Colorectal Cancer Can Be Prevented by 2030? A Scenario-Based Quantification of Risk Factor Modification, Screening, and Treatment in Norway.
Department of Registration, Cancer Registry of Norway, Institute of Population-Based Cancer Research, Majorstuen, Oslo, Norway. Katrine.Damgaard.Skyrud@kreftregisteret.no.
Source
Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev. 2017 Sep; 26(9):1420-1426
Cancer survival varies by place of residence, but it remains uncertain whether this reflects differences in tumour, patient and treatment characteristics (including tumour stage, indicators of socioeconomic status (SES), comorbidity and information on received surgery and radiotherapy) or possibly regional differences in the quality of delivered health care. National population-based data from the Cancer Registry of Norway were used to identify cancer patients diagnosed in 2002-2011 (n = 258,675). We investigated survival from any type of cancer (all cancer sites combined), as well as for the six most common cancers. The effect of adjusting for prognostic factors on regional variations in cancer survival was examined by calculating the mean deviation, defined by the mean absolute deviation of the relative excess risks across health services regions. For prostate cancer, the mean deviation across regions was 1.78 when adjusting for age and sex only, but decreased to 1.27 after further adjustment for tumour stage. For breast cancer, the corresponding mean deviations were 1.34 and 1.27. Additional adjustment for other prognostic factors did not materially change the regional variation in any of the other sites. Adjustment for tumour stage explained most of the regional variations in prostate cancer survival, but had little impact for other sites. Unexplained regional variations after adjusting for tumour stage, SES indicators, comorbidity and type of treatment in Norway may be related to regional inequalities in the quality of cancer care.
The objective was to assess the possibility of using a combination of official and unofficial Facebook ratings and comments as a basis for nation-wide hospital quality assessments in Norway.
All hospitals from a national cross-sectional patient experience survey in 2015 were matched with corresponding Facebook ratings. Facebook ratings were correlated with both case-mix adjusted and unadjusted patient-reported experience scores, with separate analysis for hospitals with official site ratings and hospitals with unofficial site ratings. Facebook ratings were also correlated with patient-reported incident scores, hospital size, 30-day mortality and 30-day readmission. Facebook comments from 20 randomly selected hospitals were analysed, contrasting the content and sentiments of official versus unofficial Facebook pages.
Facebook ratings were significantly correlated with most patient-reported indicators, with the highest correlations relating to unadjusted scores for organisation (0.60, p
