A127
Causes of death in patients diagnosed with cancer aged 15 to 24 years old in England, 1996 to 2005
Robert Alston1, Ramandeep Arora1, Marco Geraci1, Catherine O'Hara2, Tony Moran2, Tim Eden1, Jillian Birch1
1University of Manchester, UK, 2North West Cancer Intelligence Service, Manchester, UK
Background
Cancer is the second most common cause of death in teenagers and young adults in England, but there have been few studies considering what the eventual recorded causes of death were in individuals diagnosed with cancers as adolescents or young adults.
Method
Analysis was undertaken on data from the national TYA cancer dataset that includes all malignant and borderline CNS, cancers registered in 15 to 24 year olds, in England, between 1996 and 2005. Cause of death analysis was based on 2,595 available death records
Results
The most common groups were leukaemia (515 deaths), carcinomas (497 deaths), CNS tumours (432 deaths), lymphomas (367 deaths) and bone tumours (324 deaths). Cancer was recorded as a direct cause of death in 92.4% of deaths and a contributing condition in a further 3.4%. Overall 26.9% of deaths had a mention of at least one condition other than cancer as a cause of death, with a further 2% having a mention of at least one non-cancer condition as a contributing cause. The most common direct non-cancer causes were respiratory diseases (9.4%), infectious and parasitic diseases (6.1%), circulatory diseases (3.8%) and external causes (3.4%).
For the leukaemias 48% had at least one non-cancer cause of death. The most common other causes were infection (18.1%), respiratory diseases (16.9%) and external causes (8.9%). In contrast only 15.7% of carcinomas had any non-cancer causes of death recorded.
Conclusion
Almost all cases had some mention of cancer as a cause of, or contributory factor to, the deaths of cancer patients. Highlighting the diversity of other causes of death may allow future treatment strategies to be managed so as to minimise the risks from those causes.
