The National Cancer Registry Ireland

ONLINE SURVIVAL STATISTICS (RELATIVE SURVIVAL)

Relative survival is the ratio of the survival observed among a group of patients to that expected among the general population of the same age and sex. For cancer patients, it measures the effect of the excess mortality associated with a cancer diagnosis, providing an indirect alternative to estimation of cancer-specific survival. Most commonly, five-year relative survival estimates are presented. For example, if average five-year relative survival for patients a with a particular cancer type is 80%, on average 20 out of 100 patients die within five years who would not otherwise have died, based on our knowledge of 'background' mortality rates among populations of the same age and sex.

Click below (webpage, pdf or xls/Excel format) for the most recent estimates of relative survival for Irish cancer patients, at national or HSE area scale. Figures are currently shown for the most common cancers (other than non-melanoma skin cancer which is rarely fatal); other cancers may be added later.

Survival estimates for Irish patients were derived by matching of registered cancer cases against death certificates for all deaths in Ireland up the end of 2007 and comparison against life tables showing expected probabilities of survival for the general population. Calculations use the strs command with Hakulinen correction in Stata. Please interpret survival figures with caution - confidence intervals (a measure of statistical uncertainty) may be wide on some estimates, and figures shown are averages across patients of different disease stage. If quoting figures elsewhere, please acknowledge National Cancer Registry Ireland.