0000000000172131
AUTHOR
Rudolf Erttmann
Lead-time and overdiagnosis estimation in neuroblastoma screening.
In Germany, neuroblastoma is the most frequent extracranial solid childhood tumour. Its properties made it seem an ideal candidate for screening. A German trial assessed the effect of screening at one year of age from 1995-2001 in a nationwide project. We present here the methods developed for the estimation of lead-time and overdiagnosis in this project. Follow up on 1.5 million screened children and 2.1 million control children is currently available until June 2002. Ascertainment of control cohort cases and false negative cases is complete up to this date. A method for determining an empirical lead-time distribution and overdiagnosis estimate from comparing the age specific incidences in…
Children may not benefit from neuroblastoma screening at 1 year of age. Updated results of the population based controlled trial in Germany
Neuroblastoma is the second most frequent malignancy in childhood. We investigated whether screening for neuroblastoma at 1 year of age reduces the incidence of metastatic disease or mortality. Screening was offered in 6 of the 16 German states from 1995 to 2000 with the remaining states serving as controls. We studied 2,581,188 children in the screening area born between 1994 and 1999 and 2,117,600 in the control area. We compared mortality from neuroblastoma and the incidence of disseminated disease in the two groups. The screened group and the control group had similar rates of stage 4 neuroblastoma and mortality due to neuroblastoma. Comparison of the screened group and the control area…