title: Burden of soft-tissue and bone sarcoma in routine care: Estimation of incidence, prevalence and survival for health services research.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Sarcomas constitute a rare group of malignant tumors which can originate from any organ, tissue, bone or cartilage. Due to their heterogeneity, estimates of sarcoma incidence, prevalence and survival are rare. We estimated the burden of sarcoma in Germany from a large unselected cohort of patients from routine healthcare.
  
  
  METHODS
  We utilized the AOK PLUS health services research database covering complete medical information on 2,615,865 individuals from the German federal state of Saxony from 2005 to 2012. Persons were defined as sarcoma cases if they had ≥4 medical accounts with respective ICD-10 code C49 (soft-tissue sarcoma) or C40/C41 (bone sarcoma). We assessed sarcoma burden by calculating five-year prevalences, cumulative incidences, and one- and five-year relative survival rates.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Overall 1,468 persons with soft-tissue sarcoma and 671 persons with bone sarcoma were identified. Age-standardized cumulative incidence was 4.5/100,000 persons for soft-tissue and 2.1/100,000 persons for bone sarcoma (European Standard). One- and five-year relative survival was 87.8% and 66.4% for soft-tissue and 91.8% and 52.9% for bone sarcoma, respectively.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  This is the first estimation of the burden of sarcoma based on an unselected sample of routine care data and the first estimation of the burden of sarcoma in Germany. We believe that the proposed methods offer a valuable approach for further outcomes research on cancer.
authors: University Hospital Carl Gustav Carus Dresden, Center for Evidence-Based Healthcare, Fetscherstraße 74, 01307 Dresden, Germany. Electronic address: freya.trautmann@uniklinikum-dresden.de.
authors: Freya
authors: F
authors: Trautmann
authors: University Hospital Carl Gustav Carus Dresden, Medizinische Klinik und Poliklinik 1, Fetscherstraße 74, 01307 Dresden, Germany. Electronic address: markus.schuler@uniklinikum-dresden.de.
authors: Markus
authors: M
authors: Schuler
authors: University Hospital Carl Gustav Carus Dresden, Center for Evidence-Based Healthcare, Fetscherstraße 74, 01307 Dresden, Germany. Electronic address: jochen.schmitt@uniklinikum-dresden.de.
authors: Jochen
authors: J
authors: Schmitt
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D001859:Bone Neoplasms / Q000453:epidemiology* / Q000401:mortality; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D016208:Databases, Factual; D005260:Female; D005858:Germany / Q000453:epidemiology; D006302:Health Services Research; D006801:Humans; D015994:Incidence; D007223:Infant; D007231:Infant, Newborn; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D015995:Prevalence; D012189:Retrospective Studies; D012509:Sarcoma / Q000453:epidemiology* / Q000401:mortality; D012983:Soft Tissue Neoplasms / Q000453:epidemiology* / Q000401:mortality; D015996:Survival Rate; D044465:White People; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Bone sarcoma; Epidemiology; Health service research; Incidence; Outcomes research; Prevalence; Routine data; Soft-tissue sarcoma; Survival