When cancer survival statistics worsen over time a common assumption is that care must have deteriorated. A variety of reasons cause cancer survival to drop, including improved diagnosis of premalignant lesions, deleterious changes in the distribution of prognostic factors, and changes in the distribution of sociodemographic characteristics. In this article, the pitfalls of comparing published population-based survival data from different time periods or populations are discussed.
- Esther de Vries
- Henrike E. Karim-Kos
- Jan Willem W. Coebergh
