Progress in cancer survival across last two decades: A nationwide study of over 1.2 million Polish patients diagnosed with the most common cancers.

Background: The purpose of this study was to estimate the high incidence cancers survival in Poland between 2000 and 2018, with the following aim to monitor the national polish cancer control program 2020-2030 effectiveness. We calculated survival in cancer of lung, breast, prostate, colon, rectum, ovarian, cervical cancers, and skin melanoma.

Methods: Data were obtained from the Polish Cancer Registry (PLCR). We estimated age-standardized 5-year net survival (NS) with the life table method and the Pohar-Perme estimator using the International Cancer Survival Standard weights. The corresponding 95% confidence intervals (95% CI) were estimated with log transformation.

Results: Overall, 1,288,944 high incidence cancer cases were included in the study (622,486 men and 666,458 women). In 2015-2018 age-standardized 5-year NS was 85.2% (95% CI = 84.6% to 85.8%) in prostate cancer, 80.0% (79.5% to 80.4%) breast cancer, 77.3% (76.4% to 78.1%) melanoma, 58.5% (57.5% to 59.5%) cervical cancer, 57.9% (57.3% to 58.5%) colon cancer, 52.1% (51.3% to 52.9%) rectal cancer, 43.3% (42.4% to 44.3%) ovarian cancer, and 17.8% (17.4% to 18.1%) for lung cancer. Between the 2000-2004 and 2015-2018 the highest increase in survival was noted for prostate cancer (14.6% points [pp]; from 70.6% to 85.2%) and the lowest for lung cancer (4.5 pp; from 13.3% to 17.8%).

Conclusion: Cancer survivorship has been consistently improving during the last two decades. Notwithstanding these overall encouraging results, more extraordinary efforts are needed to close the cancer survival gap in Poland.