Incidence, mortality and survival in multiple myeloma compared to other hematopoietic neoplasms in Sweden up to year 2016

Kari Hemminki,Markus Hansson,Asta Försti

doi:10.1038/s41598-021-96804-8

Abstract

Survival in multiple myeloma (MM) has developed favorably over the past decades for reasons that have been ascribed to new medications and treatment. However, development of survival over a long period and comparison to other hematopoietic neoplasms (HN) is less well known. Here we used Swedish cancer data from the Nordcan database, spanning a 50-year period from 1967 to 2016, and analyzed 1- and 5-year survival data. As a novel type of analysis we calculate the difference in survival between year 1 and 5 which indicates how well survival was maintained in the 4-year period following year 1 after diagnosis. The relative 1- and 5- year survival increased constantly; the 5-year survival graph for women was almost linear. The difference between 1- and 5-year survival revealed that the 5-year survival gain was entirely due to the improvement in 1-year survival, except for the last period. Survival improvement in all HNs exceeded that in MM. The linear 5-year survival increase for female MM patients suggests a contribution by many small improvements in the first year care rather than single major events. The future challenges are to push the gains past year 1 and to extend them to old patients.

Highlights

Survival in multiple myeloma (MM) has developed favorably over the past decades for reasons that have been ascribed to new medications and treatment
Hematopoietic neoplasms (HNs) are a diverse group of cancers which differ in cellular origin, disease progression and clinical presentation
Treatment in many HNs has improved over the years and the survival increase in Hodgkin lymphoma has been among the first success stories in cancer treatment[2]

Summary

Introduction

Survival in multiple myeloma (MM) has developed favorably over the past decades for reasons that have been ascribed to new medications and treatment. Treatment in many HNs has improved over the years and the survival increase in Hodgkin lymphoma has been among the first success stories in cancer treatment[2]. The Swedish health care system has been largely free of charge to the population at large Another advantage of focusing on Sweden is its high level cancer registry which was among the first nationwide cancer registries in the world[17]. The combination of the early Swedish history on MM, tradition of disease epidemiology and open health care system stimulated us to describe nation-wide epidemiology of MM in comparison to other HNs as the previous studies by Swedish hematologists have focused on survival in MM only[10,11,18]. We use the Nordcan database in the analysis, for which data were derived from the Swedish Cancer Registry

Methods

Results

Conclusion