Thesis

Year: 1995 Author: Christopher M. Brauner, MA Advisor: Barry W. Brown Committee Members: Marek Kimmel (Chairman), James Thompson, Paul Pfeiffer, Barry Brown (Advisor) Thesis Title: Progress Against Cancer-A New Measure Abstract: Measures of the impact of cancer on survival are often incomplete, and are subject to biases which cloud the assessment of progress against the disease. A new measure, the proportion diagnosed with cancer and dead by a paticular age,is proposed. This measure incorpoates incidence, survival, and mortality, and improves upon other measures in several ways. The measure is examined separately by sex/race combinations for three periods of diagnosis. To calculate the measure, long-term survival must be known or estimated. Only a limited period of followup is available for the population studied; therefore, a model expressing survival time as a function of age and diagnois period is sought. The accelerated failure model is considered, but is poor at predeicting later survival from early experience. Estimation is accomplished by projecting short-term survival experience from early diagnois periods to later periods, and using the accelerated failure model to predict long-term survival.

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