Pancreatic cancer survival analysis with SEER and active follow-up in SF Bay Area Each year >30,000 incident cases of pancreatic cancer (PC) are diagnosed in the U.S. with nearly an equivalent number of PC deaths. Survival is dismal; 75% of patients die within one year and <4% survive greater than or equal to 5 years. No studies have been published that determine the relationship between environmental factors (non-clinical) and survival in population-based PC patients, nor have population-based studies conducted complete and active follow-up of all PC patients in a defined SEER area that includes a range of diverse populations. Using active surveillance beyond that done by SEER, we will determine an accurate population-based relative survival rate for nearly 2000 PC patients diagnosed from 1995 to 1999 who were identified through the Northern California SEER registry as part of a large population-based case-control study of PC in 6 San Francisco Bay Area counties. We will: 1. using clinical and demographic data reported on SEER abstracts and active surveillance, compare relative survival rates between interviewed and non-interviewed PC patients; 2. determine and describe risk factor data collected during in-person interviews in the main study that are associated with survival and; 3. conduct a descriptive analysis of long-term survivors identified through our active follow-up of patient vital status. The application strengths are: 1. follow-up of all patients who are alive or lost to follow-up per SEER abstract to obtain current and complete vital statistics that will allow us to compute a relative survival rate that is more accurate than that based on SEER abstract vital status data alone; 2. the ability to conduct survival analyses in interviewed patients using epidemiologic exposure data and SEER data; 3. the ability to describe the association between survival and some genetic and molecular factors in interviewed patients; 4. the ability to collect follow-up pathological, clinical and epidemiologic data from long-term PC survivors and; 5. thorough survival analyses such as these never have been conducted for PC. Our results will provide new, unique data about exposures and conditions that are associated with or predictive of survival duration in PC patients. This knowledge may be translated to screening and prevention strategies and for hypothesis generation. This work also will be a foundation for a survivorship registry to collect clinical, pathological, epidemiological and family history data that currently is unavailable for PC. ? ? ?
