NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Patients who are being treated for advanced colorectal, ovarian or testicular cancer are living longer than they have in the past, a research team from the National Cancer Institute, Bethesda, Maryland, reports in the May 15th issue of the journal Cancer, published online today.

For advanced testicular and colorectal cancer, survival gains are largely the result of more patients being cured of their disease. For ovarian cancer, survival gains have occurred despite persisting disease, Dr. Lan Huang and colleagues report.

Using data from the National Cancer Institute's Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) cancer registry, the researchers analyzed survival trends between 1973 and 2000, with follow-up through 2002, in 27,243 patients with late stage ovarian cancer, 29,033 with late stage colorectal cancer, and 1,822 with late stage testicular cancer.

They found that improvements in therapy for advanced ovarian cancer resulted in a total gain in life expectancy of 2 years. Eighty percent of this gain was due to an extension of survival time in uncured women, from 0.9 years to 2.1 years, rather than an increase in the proportion of women who have been cured.

In contrast, improvements in therapy for advanced colorectal cancer resulted in a gain of life expectancy of 2.8 years, with 82 percent of this gain due to a higher proportion of patients cured of their disease.

For testicular cancer, the cure rate during the time period rose from 23 percent to 81 percent, representing a 24 year gain in life expectancy.

Studies such as this one, Huang and colleagues wrote, "provide insight into how treatment advances are changing survival and ultimately impacting mortality. Survival patterns reflect the underlying biology of response to cancer treatment and suggest promising directions for future research."

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