title: Recovery and survival from aging-associated diseases.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  Considering disease incidence to be a main contributor to healthy lifespan of the US elderly population may lead to erroneous conclusions when recovery/long-term remission factors are underestimated. Using two Medicare-based population datasets, we investigated the properties of recovery from eleven age-related diseases.
  
  
  METHODS
  Cohorts of patients who stopped visiting doctors during a five-year follow-up since disease onset were analyzed non-parametrically and using the Cox proportional hazard model resulted in estimated recovery and survival rates and evaluated the health state of recovered individuals by comparing their survival with non-recovered patients and the general population.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Recovered individuals had lower death rates than non-recovered patients, therefore, patients who stopped visiting doctors are a healthier subcohort. However, they had higher death rates than in general population for all considered diseases, therefore the complete recovery does not occur.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Properties of recovery/long-term remission among the US population of older adults with chronic diseases were uncovered and evaluated. The results allow for a better quantifiable contribution of age-related diseases to healthy life expectancy and improving forecasts of health and mortality.
authors.affiliation: Center for Population Health and Aging, Duke University, Durham, NC 27708, United States. igor.akushevich@duke.edu
authors.forename: Igor
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Akushevich
authors.forename: Julia
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Kravchenko
authors.forename: Svetlana
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Ukraintseva
authors.forename: Konstantin
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Arbeev
authors.forename: Anatoliy I
authors.initials: AI
authors.lastname: Yashin
mesh_terms: D000367:Age Factors; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D015331:Cohort Studies; D003327:Coronary Disease / Q000401:mortality*; D005260:Female; D005500:Follow-Up Studies; D006801:Humans; D053208:Kaplan-Meier Estimate; D008137:Longitudinal Studies; D008297:Male; D006278:Medicare / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D009026:Mortality / Q000639:trends*; D009369:Neoplasms / Q000401:mortality*; D016016:Proportional Hazards Models; D020127:Recovery of Function; D020521:Stroke / Q000401:mortality*; D015996:Survival Rate; D014481:United States
keywords: Chronic disease onset; Long-term remission; Medicare; Population-based analysis; Recovery