An individual prediction of the future (disease-free) survival of patients with a history of early-stage cervical cancer, multistate model

To evaluate the possibility to give a prediction of the future (disease-free) survival, given the fact that a patient with a history of early-stage cervical cancer has been disease free for a specific period after treatment. Between January 1984 and April 2005, 615 patients with cervical cancer stages I-IIA underwent radical hysterectomy with or without adjuvant radiotherapy. The Kaplan-Meier method was used to detect statistical significance and multistate risk models to estimate the influence of covariates and to generate predicted survival curves by simulation. Simulations were done for patients with positive lymph nodes (n= 123), patients with negative lymph nodes (n= 492), and 4 hypothetical patients. The 5-year cancer-specific survival and disease-free survival of the entire group was 84% and 76%, respectively. The probability of death of the two lymph node groups and the four hypothetical patients was demonstrated in predicted cumulative probability plots. It is possible with multistate risk models to give a detailed prediction of the future (disease-free) survival, given the fact that a patient has been disease free for a specific period after treatment. This possibility is an important step forward to improve the quality of cancer care