Mortality vs Survival

This is an old article from 2007 in the New York Times demonstrating that using mortality data can yield markedly different results from using survival data, the latter being prone to several distorting factors particularly in the context of screening for lung cancer (Spiral CT).

I'm currently working on a bowel cancer project, looking at ways to use routinely collected data to enable patient choice - and the presentation of analyses is a key component - so this statistics refresher hit the mark for me.

Will also be following up on lung cancer screening, diagnostics and treatment in the coming week, to see how on the money this article from four years ago was - and then bringing this analysis to bear on current stories from the cancer diagnostics and screening world...

How Two Studies on Cancer Screening Led to Two Results New York Times March 2007