Journal of School of Public Health and

---

Background and Aim: Gastric cancer is one the most common gastrointestinal tract cancers in Iran, with East-Azerbaijan Province ranking second in the country. The objectives of this research were to determine the feasibility of using cure models in survival analysis and factors affecting short-term and long-term patient survival rates using the mixture cure cox model.

Materials and Methods: We used the available information on 184 patients diagnosed with gastric cancer in East-Azerbaijan Province cities referring to medical centers during the period 2009-2010 and followed up for 5 years.

Results: The median of survival time was 8.33 months (95% CI = 5.9-10.6). Fitting the univariate and final cox cure models showed that in the short-term survival the effect of the chemotherapy factor was statistically significant (Hazard ratio =0.49, 95% CI = 0.34, 0.69, p-value <0.001).

Conclusion: If the population under study consists of two groups of susceptible and non-susceptible individuals for the intended incident, the mixture cure models can be used for the discrete analysis of long-term and short-term survival of patients diagnosed with gastric cancer and identification of variables affecting the two survival rates.

---

Background and Aim: Breast cancer is one of the most prevalent cancers in women and is the second cause of mortality due to cancer in women, with lung cancer being the first.

Materials and Methods: In this study we followed all the cases for 5 years, patients from West-Azerbaijan and East-Azerbaijan Provinces that diagnosed with breast cancer in 2009 and 2010 that attended to health cares. Using multivariate cure cox model for the influence of variables in this study.

Results: In this study 171 cases which suffering from breast cancer had the mean age of 55.9 ± 12.9 and the range of 23 to 89 years, in time of cancer diagnosis. Mean of patients follow-up was 51.7± 23.4 months with range of 11 days to 78 months. Overalls 52 death occurred and patient survival rate of 5 years was estimated 60. 6 percent. Eventually the two variables which are economic status and emergency hospitalization were found the two factors of pre-warning in long term survival of patient suffering from breast cancer.

Conclusion: Due to the findings, it seems using cure model in patients suffering from breast cancer was better than classical survival models.

---

Background and Aims: Gastric cancer is the fifth most common cancer and the third cause of cancer death globally. This cancer ranks first and fourth in Iranian men and women, respectively. Assessment of survival rate and factors influencing it will make it possible to determine the burden of disease in the population and the relationships between different factors and the survival rate. The present study was performed to estimate the survival rate and determine its prognostic factors in patients with gastric cancer in West Azerbaijan Province, Iran.
Materials and Methods: In this study 930 cases of gastric cancer were investigated during the period 2011-2012 and the first half of 2013. The Kaplan-Meier method and Log-rank test were used to determine the survival rate and compare survivor functions, respectively; for data fitting A Cox’s proportional hazards model was used. The data were analyzed using the Stata v.11 software
Results: The average age of the patients (more than 69% males) was 66.43±12.5 years. The one-, three- and five-year survival rates were 37%, 14% and 11%, respectively. Multivariate analysis revealed that age (p=0.01) and tumor metastasis (p=0.001) were the most important prognostic factors.
Conclusion: While the survival rates in gastric cancer patients in the West Azarbaijan province, Iran were very low, a significantly higher survival rate was observed in younger patients with no tumor metastasis.