Five-year survival rates among patients treated by Seattle Cancer Care Alliance for eight types of cancer are higher than for patients treated at the other cancer programs accredited by the Commission on Cancer of the American College of Surgeons. The National Cancer Data Base (NCDB), which is operated jointly by the commission with the American Cancer Society, compiled the survival rate data.
Eight cancers with higher survival rates
The NCDB collected and measured survival-rate data for patients treated at SCCA and the University of Washington Medical Center between 1998 and 2002 for different stages of breast, colon, lung and prostate cancer, as well as leukemia, lymphoma, melanoma and myeloma. The NCBD followed patients for five years and survival rates reflect 2007, the latest year the data was available.
Notably, the five-year survival rates of SCCA patients for these cancers all were higher than those of cancer patients treated at the 235 academic research hospitals from which the NCDB collects data. The NCDB categorizes SCCA as an academic/research hospital. SCCA is the cancer-treatment arm of the Hutchinson Center, UW Medicine and Seattle Children's.
The data does not compare SCCA to individual cancer programs accredited by the Commission on Cancer.
Categories of cancer programs surveyed
The NCDB tracks the survival rates of 70 percent of all newly diagnosed cancer patients in the United States from more than 1,500 cancer programs accredited by the Commission on Cancer and publishes this data in its NCDB Survival Reports. The NCDB collects and reports cancer survival rates for three categories of cancer programs:
- Academic/research hospitals (such as SCCA)
- Comprehensive community cancer centers
- Community cancer centers.
"We are delighted that our survival rates were so good, especially because these patients were treated 10 or more years ago, and treatment was based on what was considered the state of the art in cancer care at the time," said Dr. David Byrd, director of Surgical Oncology at SCCA and cancer liaison physician to the Commission on Cancer. "When compared to other teaching hospitals the NCDB tracks, we did even better than we had hoped."
Find a comprehensive report of SCCA's survival rates at http://www.seattlecca.org/survivalrates. The report includes answers to frequently asked questions and explains the data collection process.
