Impact of advances in diagnosis and treatment on the leading causes of death and increasing survival in patients with colorectal cancer, 1975-2009
Abstract
The death rate of colorectal cancer (CRC) continued to decline in the United States during 1975 to 2009. As the diagnosis and treatment of CRC advance, more CRC patients are living longer and are more likely to die from causes other than CRC. Current knowledge on the overall impact of past achievements on outcomes of the disease is very limited, which creates a need for better understanding of the temporal trends of the survivorship and leading causes of death. Our work focused on three major aspects: First, we monitored the changing patterns of the leading causes of death in patients with CRC during 1975 to 2009; Second, we determined whether choice of chemotherapy regimens, severity of pre-existing comorbidities and chemotherapy-related toxicities made a difference in risk of death among elderly patients; Third, we estimated effect of advances in screening on tumor migration towards earlier stage and smaller size and to assess the relative contribution of advances in diagnosis and treatment on survival improvement in elderly patients.
Subject Area
Statistics|Epidemiology|Oncology
Recommended Citation
Tong, Liyue, "Impact of advances in diagnosis and treatment on the leading causes of death and increasing survival in patients with colorectal cancer, 1975-2009" (2014). Texas Medical Center Dissertations (via ProQuest). AAI3639458.
https://digitalcommons.library.tmc.edu/dissertations/AAI3639458