People above the age of 60 years saw the greatest improvement in their chances of survival between 2014 and 2018, according to research by the Belgian Cancer Registry Foundation published on Wednesday.
Every year, some 7,800 people are diagnosed with blood cancer in Belgium. These “haematological malignancies” include various types of cancer of the bone marrow and lymph nodes, mostly related to leukaemia and lymphoma.
Blood cancer accounts for almost 11% of all new cancer diagnoses in Belgium. The fifth most common type of cancer in Belgium, it affects more men (4,400 in 2021) than women (3,400).
The Cancer Registry Foundation has published a study in the medical journal Cancers, reporting on an analysis of the 24 most important subtypes of blood cancer, broken down by age category and based on 94,415 diagnoses made between 2004 and 2018.
It observed an improvement in incidence and survival in all age categories, with large variations depending on the type of blood cancer.
The greatest improvement in survival between 2004-2008 and 2014-2018 was seen in patients aged 60 and over. The increase was 8 percentage points for both the 60-79 age group and the over-80s. In the latter category, a 45-percentage point improvement in survival was even observed for Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
The improvement in incidence and survival between 2004 and 2018 can probably be explained by the innovations in both diagnosis and therapy achieved in the 1990s and 2000s.
