[The European countries confronting cancer: a set of indicators assessing public health status].

Context: We now know that efficient public policies for cancer control need to be global and take into account each and all the factors involved: economics and level of development, style of life and risk factors, access to screening, effectiveness of the care-providing system. A very simple scorecard is proposed, based on publicized public health indicators, which allows a comparison between European countries.

Methodology: We extracted 49 indicators from public databases and literature concerning 22 European countries.

[The cost of cancer in France: macroeconomic and microeconomic approaches, evolution towards a prospective payment system].

In this article we have reviewed the cost of cancer in France, based on a literature review. The cost of the treatment of cancer is estimated to be 10 thousand million euros for 75,000 lives saved annually. The increasing number of economic evaluations of cancer use both a macro economic approach, based on DRG data, and a micro economic approach, based on cost result analysis.

[Refining the French system of cost assessment for oncology patients following chemotherapy].

The aim of this study was to check the clinical predictive variables of the variance of the total cost by GHM for patients undergoing chemotherapy. 10 different hospitals registered 537 hospital stays and 1,535 day care sessions. The initial disease, metastases, other pathologies, participation to randomised trial were recorded.

[A study based on national DRG data to evaluate work load, practice and cost relating to paediatric oncology in French hospitals].

Objectives: To assess if our methodology previously used for all cancers remains valid when only 1% of cancers are analysed, we used childhood cancer in French hospitals based on national DRG data.

Materials And Methods: With a specific algorithm we extracted from the 1999 national DRG data (16,539,352 hospitalisations) the cancer data (2,947,471 hospitalisations) and the reduced cancer data (2,711,025 hospitalisations). We used this reduced cancer data to identify the 77 350 hospitalisations for childhood cancers.

[Volume and costs of the hospital management of cancer in France in 1999].

The volume of hospitalization care for cancer is hardly measured; this, in particular, because there are various structures assuming those responsibilities and heterogeneous information systems. The objective of this study is to present a model of precise algorithm of selection of hospital stays for cancers from French National databases of hospital discharges, and its results for 1999. Cancer stays are selected firstly, according to the presence of a tumor diagnosis code.

[The Livre Blanc on cancer surgery].

Context: Among the several therapeutic weapons against cancer, surgical oncology has always been a major, and remains, up today. But in that field, outcomes are heavily dependent on the way the surgery is conducted.

Objectives: The National Federation of Cancer Centers, in accordance with all French cancer specialists, tried to define the adequate conditions allowing the best practices for surgical oncology.

[Public health: a true concern in the French political scene].

A recent report of the Senate revealed the difficulties of elaborating an effective cancer policy in France. Senators particularly pointed to the necessity of establishing cancer care priorities and to the tremendous need for medical coordination. This paper will develop the annual state debate on social security funding.