Relative survival

Relative survival of a disease, in survival analysis, is calculated by dividing the overall survival after diagnosis by the survival as observed in a similar population not diagnosed with that disease. A similar population is composed of individuals with at least age and gender similar to those diagnosed with the disease. Relative survival of a disease, in survival analysis, is calculated by dividing the overall survival after diagnosis by the survival as observed in a similar population not diagnosed with that disease. A similar population is composed of individuals with at least age and gender similar to those diagnosed with the disease. When describing the survival experience of a group of people or patients typically the method of overall survival is used, and it presents estimates of the proportion of people or patients alive at a certain point in time. The problem with measuring overall survival by using the Kaplan-Meier or actuarial survival methods is that the estimates include two causes of death: deaths from the disease of interest and deaths from all other causes, which includes old age, other cancers, trauma and any other possible cause of death. In general, survival analysis is interested in the deaths by a disease rather than all causes. Thus, a 'cause-specific survival analysis' is employed to measure disease-specific survival. Thus, there are two ways in performing a cause-specific survival analysis 'competing risks survival analysis' and 'relative survival.'