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Background: Large improvements in childhood cancer survival have been reported over recent decades. Data from cancer registries have the advantage of providing a 'whole of population' approach to gauge the success of cancer control efforts. Objectives: The aim of this study was to investigate recent survival estimates for children diagnosed with cancer Australia and to examine the extent of changes in survival over the last 35 years. For the first time, we also estimated the number of deaths among Australian children that were potentially avoided due to improvements in survival. Methods: A retrospective, population‐based cohort study design was used. Case information was extracted from the Australian Childhood Cancer Registry for 1983–2016, with follow‐up to 31 December 2017. Eligible children were aged 0–14 with a basis of diagnosis other than autopsy or death certificate only. Five‐year relative survival was calculated using the semi‐complete cohort method for three diagnosis periods (1983–1994, 1995–2006 and 2007–2016), and changes in survival over time were assessed via flexible parametric models. Avoided deaths within 5 years for those diagnosed between 1995 and 2016 were estimated under the assumption that survival rates remained the same as for 1983–1994. Results: Overall 5‐year survival within the study cohort (n = 20,871) increased from 72.8% between 1983 and1994 to 86.1% between 2007 and 2016, equating to an adjusted excess mortality hazard ratio of 1.82 (95% confidence interval 1.67, 1.97). Most cancers showed improvements in survival; other gliomas, hepatoblastoma and osteosarcoma were exceptions. Among children diagnosed between 1995 and 2016, 38.7% of expected deaths within 5 years of diagnosis (n = 1537 of 3970) were avoided due to temporal improvements in survival. Conclusions: Survival for childhood cancer has continued to improve over recent years, thanks mainly to ongoing progress in treatment development combined with improved supportive care. Providing innovative measures of survival, such as avoided deaths, may assist with understanding outcome data produced by cancer registries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Lung cancer is the most common cause of cancer‐related mortality for both Indigenous and non‐Indigenous Australians, and the death rate of lung cancer in Indigenous Australians is increasing. Aims: To provide a comprehensive description of patterns of lung cancer presentation, diagnosis, treatment and outcomes in Indigenous and non‐Indigenous Australians in the Top End of the Northern Territory. Methods: Retrospective cohort study of adult patients with a new diagnosis of lung cancer in the Top End between January 2010 and December 2014. Unadjusted survival probabilities by indigenous status were calculated. The primary end‐point was all‐cause mortality. Results: Despite receiving similar diagnostic procedures and treatment, Indigenous Australians with lung cancer have poorer 1‐ and 5‐year survival (25.0% and 9.4% respectively), when compared to non‐Indigenous Australians included in the study (42.0% and 16.2% respectively). Indigenous lung cancer patients were more likely to be female (51.6% of indigenous patients were female, compared to 30.5% non‐indigenous), be current smokers (61.3% vs 36.9%), have more comorbidities (73.6% vs 52.7%, 24.2% vs 5.3% and 30.8% vs 14.2% for respiratory disease, renal insufficiency and diabetes mellitus respectively), and live in more socio‐economically disadvantaged (66.7% vs 14.2%) and very remote areas (66.1% vs 6.8%). They were also more likely to die at home, compared to their non‐indigenous counterparts (64.3% vs 26.7%). Conclusions: Indigenous patients from the Top End diagnosed with lung cancer were more likely to have poorer survival outcomes when compared to non‐indigenous people. Potential reasons for the discrepancy in survival need to be addressed urgently. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Indigenous women continue to experience a disproportionately higher burden of cervical cancer than non‐Indigenous women in Australia. The National Indigenous Cervical Screening Project used probabilistic record linkage to combine population‐based administrative databases and identify Indigenous women on Pap Smear Registers. This study aimed to quantify the spatial variation by local government areas (LGAs) for Indigenous and non‐Indigenous women in Queensland in cervical screening participation rates and related outcomes. Empirical Bayes local geostatistical smoothing was performed to reduce the likelihood of spurious variation between small areas. The cohort included 1,091,260 women (2 per cent Indigenous) aged 20 to 69 with 2,393,708 Pap smears between 2006 and 2011. Indigenous women had smoothed LGA‐specific 5‐year participation rates (interquartile range (IQR) 38.9–53.3 per 100 eligible women) consistently lower than non‐Indigenous women (IQR 80.7–85.3). The non‐overlapping confidence intervals of these rates suggest that the Indigenous differential was significant. Compared with Indigenous women, non‐Indigenous women had consistently lower and more stable prevalence rates of histologically confirmed high grade abnormalities (IQR 8.0–10.1 versus 15.0–21.3 per 1,000 screened women). Although the LGA‐specific rates also suggest that a higher proportion of non‐Indigenous women were followed‐up within two months of an abnormal screening result, the wide confidence intervals for these estimates limit our ability to draw definitive conclusions about spatial patterns for this outcome. These findings highlight the importance of continued monitoring and ongoing efforts to identify drivers of these patterns and develop effective strategies to improve participation and potentially reduce the cervical cancer burden among Indigenous women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]