To reduce these incident cancer cases, improvement of smoking control policies and extension of colorectal cancer screening should be the two priorities in cancer prevention for the next years.

High variability and differences have been observed in survival among adults in Spain according to the type of cancer diagnosed, from above 84% to below 10%, reflecting high heterogeneity. The differences in prognosis by age, sex and period of diagnosis reveal opportunities for improving cancer care in Spain.

Few studies have addressed longer‐term survival for breast cancer in European women. We have made predictions of 10‐year survival for European women diagnosed with breast cancer in 2000–2002. Data for 114,312 adult women (15–99 years) diagnosed with a first primary malignant cancer of the breast during 2000–2002 were collected in the EUROCARE‐4 study from 24 population‐based cancer registries in 14 European countries. We estimated relative survival at 1, 5, and 10 years after diagnosis for women who were alive at some point during 2000–2002, using the period approach. We also estimated 10‐year survival conditional on survival to 1 and 5 years after diagnosis. Ten‐year survival exceeded 70% in most regions, but was only 54% in Eastern Europe, with the highest value in Northern Europe (about 75%). Ten‐year survival conditional on survival for 1 year was 2–6% higher than 10‐year survival in all European regions, and geographic differences were smaller. Ten‐year survival for women who survived at least 5 years was 88% overall, with the lowest figure in Eastern Europe (79%) and the highest in the UK (91%). Women aged 50–69 years had higher overall survival than older and younger women (79%). Six cancer registries had adequate information on stage at diagnosis; in these jurisdictions, 10‐year survival was 89% for local, 62% for regional and 10% for metastatic disease. Data on stage are not collected routinely or consistently, yet these data are essential for meaningful comparison of population‐based survival, which provides vital information for improving breast cancer control.

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BackgroundWe provide population-based long-term survival indicators of breast cancer patients by quantifying the observed survival, and the probabilities of death due to breast cancer and to other causes by age and tumor stage at diagnosis.MethodsWe included a total of 10,195 female patients diagnosed before 85 years with invasive primary breast cancer in Girona and Tarragona during the periods 1985–1994 and 1995–2004 and followed-up until December 31st 2014. The survival indicators were estimated at 5, 10, 15 and 20 years of follow-up comparing diagnostic periods.ResultsComparing diagnostic periods: I) the probability of death due to other causes did not change; II) the 20-year survival for women diagnosed ≤ 49 years increased 13% (1995–2004 = 68%; 1985–1994:55%), whereas their probability of death due to breast cancer decreased at the same pace (1995–2004 = 29%; 1985–1994 = 42%); III) at 10 years of follow-up, decreases in the probabilities of death due to breast cancer across age groups switched from 11 to 17% resulting in a risk of death reduction of 19% after adjusting by stage. During 1995–2004, the stage-specific 10-year probabilities of death due to breast cancer switched from: 3–6% in stage I, 18–20% in stage II, 34–46% in stage III and surpassed 70% in stage IV beyond 5 years after diagnosis.ConclusionsIn our study, women diagnosed with breast cancer had higher long-term probability to die from breast cancer than from other causes. The improvements in treatment and the lead-time bias in detecting cancer in an early stage resulted in a reduction of 19% in the risk of death between diagnostic periods.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (10.1007/s12094-018-1852-1) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.