Estimation of cancer incidence and survival parameters from population-based registries

Cancer prevalence is the proportion of people in a population diagnosed with cancer in the past and still alive. One way to estimate prevalence is via population-based registries, where data on diagnosis and life status of all incident cases occurring in the covered population are collected. In this paper some methods regarding the fitting of the incidence and survival models to data collected by the SEER9 registries in the United States on various cancer sites and two sexes, are applied. Such estimates are then used to estimate complete prevalence, as described by Gigli (2001). Section 1 describes the survival model which has been used, section 2 describes two incidence models, and finally section 3 makes brief comments on the results. The tables list the parameter estimates for each cancer site and sex.