What country's health care system has the best survival for prostate cancer? (please link to factual source)?
Thanks for Britain's CYA Report trying to explain the mitigating circumstances for Britain's Social Medicine's pathetic cancer track record. Kudos for that.
Politics - 3 Answers
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1 :
http://www.reuters.com/article/pressRelease/idUS74068+07-Jul-2008+BW20080707 the usa has the most unpopular health care sytem. by far.
2 :
Here ya go: "The highest survival rates were found in the U.S. for breast and prostate cancer, in Japan for colon and rectal cancers in men, and in France for colon and rectal cancers in women,.."
3 :
International Cancer Survival Rates are subject to numerous factors relating to comparisons based on definition and recording. http://info.cancerresearchuk.org/news/behindtheheadlines/europeancancersurvival/ Quote: Dr Harry Burns, lead clinician for cancer in Scotland - the equivalent of England's newly appointed cancer tsar - said that figures showing higher death rates for Britain than Europe and America were not comparing like with like. The system for registering cancer deaths is much tighter in Britain than elsewhere. A cancer patient who dies of a heart attack will be registered as a cancer death in the UK, while other countries' cancer registries tend to understate their death rates, Dr Burns said. Eurocare II throws up oddities which cast doubt on the validity of the figures. The study, showing five-year survival rates from 1978 to 1989 for 17 countries, suggests Estonia has the best rate for certain cancers, above that of prosperous Germany and France. It also shows that immigrants to Switzerland have a higher survival rate than the resident population - because most return to their home countries in their final months and their deaths are not recorded. Separate evidence from international trials shows that British patients included in the trials do just as well as patients from other countries, casting doubt on the claims that treatment is less good in Britain. Dr Burns said: "Until we have a properly designed study comparing like with like, it is daft and demoralising to say we do badly. There is no evidence that British patients are dying more frequently than they need to. We are underselling ourselves and it doesn't help public confidence." His view was backed yesterday by Dr Peter Boyle, the director of epidemiology and biostatistics at the European Institute of Oncology in Milan. Dr Boyle said international comparisons could not be relied on because the disease might be more advanced at diagnosis in some countries than in others."There may well be differences [in survival] but we can't say whether they are due to treatment, diagnosis or something else. I don't think anyone knows the true position," he said. Dr Boyle said global comparisons of this kind were meaningless: " Is spending money the key thing or is it spending it appropriately? We need to know the outcome of higher spending for individual patients, but that is difficult to assess." The best cancer units in Britain provided care that was the equal of any in the world but the standard varied. There were also regional differences in death rates. Dr Boyle said the best hope lay in the Calman-Hine proposals for spreading "best practice" by concentrating cancer care in specialist units linked to district hospitals. "Calman-Hine was a huge breakthrough that put the patient, not the organisation, first. It has been very successfully implemented in Birmingham and Yorkshire. It should ultimately lead to a better deal for patients," he said.
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