Survival trends of childhood cancer diagnosed during 1970-1994 in Piedmont, Italy: A report from the Childhood Cancer Registry

Background. The Childhood Cancer Registry of Piedmont (CCRP) started its ac tivity in 1967. It is population based and covers the Piedmont Region (popu lation 4,500,000; NW Italy). This article reports on time trends in surviva l after a childhood cancer diagnosed during 1970-1994. Procedure. During 19 70-1994, 2,329 incident cases were registered at CCRP on the basis of histo logical and/or clinical information, excluding 30 cases reported only by de ath certificate. Histological or hematological diagnosis was available for 2,067 cases. Vital status was assessed through the offices of the town of r esidence. At the end of follow-up, 1,202 cases were alive, 1,084 dead and 4 3 were not traceable. Survival was measured for the major diagnostic groups using both univariate and multivariate statistics. Results. The 5-yr survi val rate for acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) improved regularly from 24. 7% in 1970-1974 to 81.1% in 1990-1994, for acute nonlymphoblastic leukemia (ANLL) from 0% to 38.1%, for non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL) from 25.2% to 67.7% , for tumors of the central nervous system (CNS) (ali types) from 33.4% to 75.9% and for Ewing tumor from 0% to 90%. Focusing on survival by period of diagnosis, the highest 5-year survival rate was observed for children diag nosed during 1985-1989 for medulloblastoma, neuroblastoma (NB), retinoblast oma, Wilms tumor, osteosarcoma, and rhabdomyosarcoma and for children diagn osed in 1990-1994 for the remaining sites. The trend overtime was statistic ally significant for ALL, ANLL, NHL, CNS tumors, NE, and osteosarcoma as we ll as for ail malignancies together. Conclusions. Population-based survival studies are useful complements to clinical studies. Survival results in th e present study are similar to those presented for other European countries and the United States. For most types of neoplasm (except CNS) survival pr obability appears to stabilize 5-10 years after diagnosis. Med. Pediatr. On col. 36:481-488, 2001. (C) 2001 Wiley-Liss, Inc.