Projecting cancer prevalence by phase of care: a methodological approach for health service planning.

Background: In most developed countries, the number of cancer survivors is expected to increase in the coming decades because of rising incidence and survival rates and an aging population. These patients are heterogeneous in terms of health service demands: from recently diagnosed patients requiring first-course therapy to patients with extensive care needs and severe disabilities to long-term survivors who only need minimal care. Therefore, in terms of providing healthcare planners and policymakers with useful indicators for addressing policies according to health service demands, it is worth supplying updated measures of prevalence for groups of patients based on the level of care they require.