Expected Survival Using Models of Life Table Compared with Survival of Gastrointestinal Tract Cancer Patients in North of Iran

Background: northern regions of iran have been encountered to dominate malignancies of gastrointestinal (gi) tract. we came to examine the total excess mortality due to the gi cancer in mazandaran province.methods: socio-demographic and clinical data of 484 patients with gi cancer collected during the years 1990-1991were available from babol cancer registry. patients were followed up for 15 years by the year 2006. using the west coale-de- meny life table model, a number of five life tables for men and four for women, corresponding to each birth cohort, were constructed. observed survival was obtained using the kaplan-meier method and compared with the expected survival cal culated using the direct adjusted method represented by stein et al.g cowe-h-;coo ideo4—t3 cd t3 co ooqresults: the sample of subjects encompassed 66.3% men and 33.7% women with mean age 58.26 ± 10.90, and endoscopy was the general method for cancer detection. esophagus accounted for 74.2%, and stomach and colorectal accounted for 22.7% and 3.1% of gi cancers, respectively. survival rate in 15 years following diagnosis was nearly 6%. comparing pa tient and expected survival curves showed a significantly reduced survival for patients of each gi cancer over the whole period and especially during the first two years after diagnosis.conclusion: patients experienced reduced survival associated with the development of gi cancers. considering individuals in a population come from different cohorts, adjustment by constructing distinct life tables for different birth cohorts is rec ommended. the west model is recommended as a first choice to represent mortality in countries whose registration systems are exposed to various errors.