Xavier Troussard

BACKGROUND: The struggle against social inequalities is a priority for many international organizations. The objective of the study was to quantify the cancer burden related to social deprivation by identifying the cancer sites linked to socioeconomic status and measuring the proportion of cases associated with social deprivation. METHODS: The study population comprised 68 967 cases of cancer diagnosed between 1997 and 2009 in Normandy and collected by the local registries. The social environment was assessed at an aggregated level using the European Deprivation Index (EDI). The association between incidence and socioeconomic status was assessed by a Bayesian Poisson model and the excess of cases was calculated with the Population Attributable Fraction (PAF). RESULTS: For lung, lips-mouth-pharynx and unknown primary sites, a higher incidence in deprived was observed for both sexes. The same trend was observed in males for bladder, liver, esophagus, larynx, central nervous system and gall-bladder and in females for cervix uteri. The largest part of the incidence associated with deprivation was found for cancer of gall-bladder (30.1%), lips-mouth-pharynx (26.0%), larynx (23.2%) and esophagus (19.6%) in males and for unknown primary sites (18.0%) and lips-mouth-pharynx (12.7%) in females. For prostate cancer and melanoma in males, the sites where incidence increased with affluence, the part associated with affluence was respectively 9.6% and 14.0%. CONCLUSIONS: Beyond identifying cancer sites the most associated with social deprivation, this kind of study points to health care policies that could be undertaken to reduce social inequalities.

Long-term population-based survival data detailed by cancer subtype are important to measure the overall outcomes of malignancy managements. We provide net survival estimates at 1, 3, 5 and 10-year postdiagnosis on 37,549 hematological malignancy (HM) patients whose ages were >15 years, diagnosed between 1989 and 2004 and actively followed until 2008 by French population-based cancer registries. These are, to our knowledge, the first unbiased estimates of 10-year net survival in HMs detailed by subtypes. HMs were classified according to the International Classification of Diseases-Oncology 3. Net survival was estimated with the unbiased Pohar-Perme method. The results are reported by sex and age classes. The changes of these indicators by periods of diagnosis were tabulated and the trends of the net mortality rates over time since diagnosis graphed. In all, 5- and 10-year age-standardized net survivals after HMs varied widely from 81 and 76% for classical Hodgkin lymphoma (CHL) to 18 and 14% for acute myeloid leukemia (AML). Even in HMs with the most favorable prognoses, the net survival decreased between 5- and 10-year postdiagnosis. Women had better prognoses than men and age at diagnosis was an unfavorable prognostic factor for most HMs. In patients <55 years old, the net mortality rate decreased to null values 5-year postdiagnosis in AML and 10-year postdiagnosis in CHL, precursor non-HL, chronic myelogenous leukemia, diffuse large B-cell lymphoma and follicular lymphoma. The prognoses improved for various HMs over the study period. The obtained unbiased indicators are important to evaluate national cancer plans.