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RESEARCH PRODUCT

Estimation of statistical time-to-cure in cancer patients

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Three million people are living in France with a personal past of cancer and undergo difficulties in accessing loans and insurance. Since 2016, the French law « modernisation de notre système de santé » set the "right to be forgotten" (time beyond which insurance applicants with a past of cancer will no longer have to declare it) at 10 years after the end of treatment. From a statistical point of view, this delay can be considered as the time from which mortality due to cancer (excess mortality) disappears. After this time, the net survival curves reach a plateau corresponding to the proportion of cured patients. The verification of this hypothesis is based on two criteria: a negligible excess mortality rate and a graphic confirmation of the existence of a plateau. We proposed a new definition of the time-to-cure as the time from which the probability of belonging to the cured group reaches 95%.The first aim of this thesis was to estimate time-to-cure for each cancer site by sex and age using population-based data from the FRANCIM registries network. Time-to-cure was lower than 12 years in most sites complying with the cure hypothesis. It was less than 5 years, or even null in some age groups, for skin melanoma, testicular and thyroid. Criteria to verify the cure hypothesis are subjective and time-to-cure is not directly estimated in pre-existing cure models. A new model has been developed including time-to-cure as a parameter to address the question of statistical cure and to allow direct estimation of time-to-cure.The second objective of this thesis was to compare, in controlled situations in which the excess mortality rate became null, the performances of this new model with that of two other cure models. Estimated net survival and cure fraction have been compared to the theoretical values used to simulate the data. Direct estimation of time-to-cure is possible under strict conditions.