[Effect of regional centralized treatment on chances of survival in rectal cancer in East Germany]

Abstract

Based on cases of rectum-carcinoma reported to the National Cancer Registry a population based method is demonstrated to measure the influence of a regional-centralized treatment on the relative survival rates for cancer patients. This new approach use a centralization-index, characterizing the centralization of treatment activities in single countries. It is shown, that the end results in regions with a high index are much better than that in other regions.