Quantifying Survival and Mortality in Childhood Cancer Survivors

For more than two decades, the increased risk of premature mortality among survivors of childhood and adolescent cancer has been documented. At the same time, quantifying the risk of premature mortality in this young but growing population has been challenging. In this issue of CEBP, Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) program data are used to report overall improvement in 5-year relative survival between 1975 and 2020, accompanied by a decline in the standardized mortality ratio. In addition, among the subset survived to the 5-year postdiagnosis milestone, the 5-year relative survival improved for some cancers including lymphoid leukemia, Hodgkin lymphoma, non-Hodgkin lymphoma, and central nervous system tumors. These findings have implications for policy, clinical care, and future research. See related article by Hong et al., p. 846.