Background: Cancer survival statistics are typically reported by using measures discounting the impact of other-cause mortality, such as net survival. This is a hypothetical measure and is interpreted as excluding the possibility of cancer patients dying from other causes. Crude probability of death partitions the all-cause probability of death into deaths from cancer and other causes.
Methods: The National Cancer Registration and Analysis Service is the single cancer registry for England. In 2006-2015, 1,590,477 malignant tumours were diagnosed for breast, colorectal, lung, melanoma and prostate cancer in adults. We used a relative survival framework, with a period approach, providing estimates for up to 10-year survival. Mortality was partitioned into deaths due to cancer or other causes. Unconditional and conditional (on surviving 1-years and 5-years) crude probability of death were estimated for the five cancers.
Results: Elderly patients who survived for a longer period before dying were more likely to die from other causes of death (except for lung cancer). For younger patients, deaths were almost entirely due to the cancer.
Conclusion: There are different measures of survival, each with their own strengths and limitations. Careful choices of survival measures are needed for specific scenarios to maximise the understanding of the data.