SUBSTANTIAL VARIATION IN THERAPY FOR COLORECTAL-CANCER ACROSS EUROPE - EUROCARE ANALYSIS OF CANCER REGISTRY DATA FOR 1987

To provide a quantitative description of the treatments applied to mal ignant colorectal cancer across Europe, we analysed all cases (11333) of colorectal cancer registered in 1987 by 15 Cancer Registries in eig ht European countries. In a third of cancer registries, therapy was kn own for all cases, in the others 1-15% of registrations lacked treatme nt information. Eighty per cent of all patients received surgical rese ction, ranging from 58% (Estonia) to 92% (Tarn). The proportion of res ections, decreased with advancing age (85-73% for colon cancer; 85-70% for rectal cancer for <65 years to >74 years, respectively). Only 4% of colon cancer patients received adjuvant or palliative chemotherapy, range 1-12%. Sixteen per cent of rectal cancer patients received radi otherapy with great inter-registry variability (1-43%). Since the prop ortion of surgically resected patients correlated positively with the 5-year relative survival probability reported by the recently publishe d EUROCARE study, this may be part of the explanation for the major di fferences in survival for these cancers among different European popul ations. The most likely determinant of this correlation is stage at di agnosis, but, quality of, and access to surgery, as well as access to endoscopy, may differ among countries and registry areas, and these ma y also contribute to inter-country survival differences. Copyright (C) 1996 Elsevier Science Ltd