日本走出第一步
有些醫院的病人末期的比率多 所以其5年"預後率"看來比較差 所以有許多因素讓公布的數據無法反映所謂"醫療品質"
Cancer centers release survival rates
10/05/2007
The Japanese Association of Clinical Cancer Centers for the first time released the five-year survival rates of cancer patients along with the names of the medical institutions.
The data released Thursday about patients suffering from stomach, breast, lung and colon cancers show a big difference in the survival rates at the 30 member institutions.
For stomach cancer, for example, the National Cancer Center Hospital in Tokyo's Tsukiji district had the highest five-year survival rate, at 84.1 percent. The lowest rate was 45.5 percent at an institution that was not named.
The association released the names and the rates in response to growing demands from patients for treatment results at specific hospitals.
The association also wants to encourage each cancer center to analyze the reasons for the discrepancies in the survival rates so that all the hospitals will be able to provide equal levels of treatment.
However, the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare study group that compiled the statistics warned patients not to jump to conclusions based on the data.
"The higher survival rates do not necessarily mean a higher quality of treatment," a group official said. "We would like patients to use the released data as reference material when they talk with doctors about treatment."
The study group calculated the five-year survival rates by analyzing cancer patients hospitalized for the first time in 1999 at the 30 member hospitals, which have been designated by the health ministry as core regional cancer centers.
The member institutions meet the association's requirements, such as providing advanced medical care.
The survival rates were calculated for centers that treated more than 100 patients of each of the four cancers. The rates were calculated when the group could follow the progression of treated patients for five years in 90 percent or more of the patients and determine the stages of cancer progression in at least 60 percent of them.
The calculated figures also took into account other factors, such as sex and age.
Figures were available at 18 hospitals for stomach cancer, 15 for lung cancer, 11 for breast cancer and 12 for colon cancer.
The names of the hospitals were made public with their approval. Some of the hospitals asked not to be identified.
The biggest gap in survival rates was the 38.6 percentage point difference for stomach cancer between the National Cancer Center Hospital and the unnamed institution.
The second-largest discrepancy, of 30.8 percentage points, was for lung cancer, followed by 23.8-point difference for colon cancer and 20.6 points for breast cancer.
The study group said the survival rates do not precisely reflect the quality of treatment because many factors influenced the figures.
At the National Cancer Center Hospital, patients of stomach cancer in the early stage I accounted for 70 percent of the patients studied. The number of patients in the first stage was 12.3 times larger than that for the final stage IV.
At the hospital with the lowest survival rate, the number of stage I patients was half that of stage IV patients.
The 286 hospitals designated as local cancer centers across the nation started projects last spring to follow the conditions of cancer patients based on unified procedures specified by the government.
Those hospitals are expected to release their five-year survival rates around 2014.(IHT/Asahi: October 5,2007)
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