Geographical variability in survival of European children with central nervous system tumours

Survival for childhood central nervous system (CNS) tumours varies across Europe, partly because of the difficulty of distinguishing malignant from non-malignant disease. This study examines bias in CNS tumours survival analysis to obtain the reliable and comparable survival figures. We analysed survival data for about 15, 000 children (age <15) diagnosed with CNS between 2000 and 2007, from 71 population- based cancer registries in 27 countries. We selected high- quality data based on registry- specific data quality indicators and recorded observed 1-year and 5-year survival by countries and CNS entity. We provided age- adjusted survival and used a Cox model to calculate the hazard ratios …