Survival of adult patients with solid cancer in Reunion Island, 1998-2014.

INTRODUCTION: Population-based cancer survival is a major indicator of effectiveness of cancer management. This study is the first population-based study to estimate the net survival (NS) of adult cancer patients in Reunion Island, a French overseas department with distinctive epidemiological, cultural, and sociodemographic characteristics. METHODS: All adult incident cases (n=23,055) of invasive solid tumors diagnosed between 1998 and 2014 and registered in the Reunion Island Cancer Registry were included in the study. The Pohar-Perme estimator was used to estimate 1-, 3-, 5-, and 10-year NS. RESULTS: 5-year NS ranged from 7% (liver in women) to 97% (thyroid cancer in women) for cancers diagnosed between 2006 and 2014. For the most common cancers, the age-standardized 5-year NS of women was 81% for breast cancer, 58% for colorectal cancer and 62% for cervical cancer. For men, the age-standardized 5-year NS was 85% for prostate cancer, 12% for lung cancer, and 52% for colorectal cancer. Age-standardized 5-year NS increased slightly with the period of diagnosis (from 1998-2005 to 2006-2014) for prostate, breast, head and neck, lung, colorectal (women), and stomach (men) cancers, remained stable for colorectal (men) cancer, and decreased slightly for cervical and stomach (women) cancers. DISCUSSION: Overall, NS was lower in Reunion Island than in mainland France. While the epidemiological, cultural, and sociodemographic characteristics of the Reunionese population likely explain some of the observed differences compared to mainland France, site-specific studies are needed to explore the different determinants of survival in Reunion Island.