A computer program package for relative survival analysis

Abstract

A computer program package has been constructed for use in patient survival analyses for chronic diseases based on aggregated data. The central concept of the analyses — the relative survival rate — is the ratio of the observed survival rate of the patients to the survival rate expected in a group in the general population similar to the group of patients at the beginning of the follow-up (interval), with respect to age, sex and calendar time. This quantity is used to measure patient survival adjusted for the effect of mortality attributable to the competing risks of death without employing information on causes of death of individual patients. The package contains three alternative methods of estimating the relative survival rates, two different ways of estimating the expectation of life for the patients, and five methods of testing the relative survival pattern using information on the whole follow-up period. Conventional survival and competing risk analysis can also be performed with the package. It is hoped that the package will facilitate standardization of statistical methodology and terminology in long-term survival studies for chronic diseases.