Re: OT: An inconvenient truth for the GOP: Canada's system is better

"Ed Pawlowski" <esp@xxxxxxxx> wrote in
news:koednZhinvwQ3yXXnZ2dnUVZ_jidnZ2d@xxxxxxxxxxxx:

According to the survey of cancer survival rates in Europe and the
United States, published recently in Lancet Oncology :

Lancet has published a series of caveats (in the December 2007 issue) on
these statistics. I include part of an article:

In a recent issue of The Lancet Oncology, findings from EUROCARE-4 were
published, which showed that survival for all cancers combined in the UK
was not only below the European average, but also similar to survival in
some eastern European countries, where the healthcare budget is less than
a third of that in the UK. These findings led to the suggestion that the
UK government now faces substantial challenges in improving cancer
survival. The study also showed that European survival from solid tumours
was lower than that reported in the USA.

The clear implication of these findings is that patients presenting with
the same disease will do less well in the UK than in other western
countries, a thought that is frightening for UK National Health Service
(NHS) patients and demoralising for NHS staff. However, a closer look at
the published data suggests that the quality of care offered by the NHS
is not the only explanation for poor UK survival, with differences in
patient characteristics, disease characteristics, and data recording also
playing a part. Data show that patients present later and with poorer
performance status in the UK than in other countries, and caution needs
to be exercised when comparing the cancer survival statistics of the UK
with the rest of Europe and certainly the USA.

Furthermore, the UK has a thorough cancer registry that covers almost
100% of the population, unlike much of the rest of Europe, where
population percentages as low as 1% in Germany and 9% in Poland were
included in the data. The USA also includes only 26·2% of the population
in their studies. An area bias in many countries also exists?eg, the
wealthy north of Italy was predominantly represented in the Italian
statistics included in the EUROCARE study. Diversity between countries is
also present in the recording of diseases, especially for lung cancer,
where, in the USA, only histologically confirmed lung cancer is recorded,
thus excluding those without proven histology. Patients without
histologically proven disease have a uniformly poor prognosis and their
exclusion from the data produces a 25% improvement in 5-year survival.

In addition to the UK, cancer registries in some Nordic countries also
cover almost 100% of the population, but a slightly improved survival
does seem to exist in these countries compared with the UK. However, no
comparison of race or histological subtypes have been made, and further
variables, such as in data collection, disease definition, and disease
follow-up, might also be present, which will have an effect on these
findings.

http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanonc/issue/vol8no12/PIIS1470-2045%
2807%29X7082-7

http://tinyurl.com/mad4ug

--

Capitalism is the astounding belief that the most wickedest
of men will do the most wickedest of things for the greatest
good of everyone. - John Maynard Keynes
.

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