Influence of education level on cancer survival in Sweden.
BACKGROUND
While cancer survival at several sites has historically been shown to vary by education level, a current comprehensive assessment of survival following a cancer diagnosis in Sweden, a country with universal health care and cancer screening, has yet to be carried out.


METHODS
Using the 2006 update of the Swedish Family-Cancer Database and Cox's proportional hazards regression methods, we calculate the adjusted hazard ratio (HR) and 95% confidence interval to estimate the influence of education level on site-specific cancer survival.


RESULTS
Significant positive associations between education level and cancer survival were observed following a diagnosis of upper aerodigestive track cancer, colon cancer, pancreatic cancer, lung cancer, kidney cancer, urinary bladder cancer, melanoma, non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, breast cancer, endometrial cancer, cervical cancer, prostate cancer, and testicular cancer. Although the HRs differed between cancer sites, compared with women and men completing <9 years of education, university graduates were associated with a significant 40% improved survival for all cancer sites combined.


CONCLUSIONS
Survival differences by education level were observed for both indolent and aggressive malignancies.
Hussain
S K
SK
Center for Family and Community Medicine, Karolinska Institute, Huddinge, Sweden. shehnaz.hussain@ki.se
Lenner
P
P
Sundquist
J
J
Hemminki
K
K
D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D016208:Databases, Factual; D004522:Educational Status; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009369:Neoplasms / Q000401:mortality*; D009928:Organ Specificity; D016016:Proportional Hazards Models; D012042:Registries; D016019:Survival Analysis; D013548:Sweden / Q000453:epidemiology