Cancer survival among children of Turkish descent in Germany 1980–2005: a registry-based analysis

We identified children of Turkish descent among cancer cases using a name-based approach. We compared 5-year survival probabilities of Turkish and other children in three time periods of diagnosis (1980–87, 1988–95, 1996–2005) using the Kaplan-Meier method and log-rank tests.The 5-year survival probability for all cancers among 1774 cases of Turkish descent (4.76% of all 37.259 cases) was 76.9% compared to 77.6% in the comparison group (all other cases; p = 0.15). We found no age- or sex-specific survival differences (p-values between p = 0.18 and p = 0.90). For the period 1980–87, the 5-year survival probability among Turkish children with lymphoid leukaemia was significantly lower (62% versus 75.8%; p < 0.0001), this remains unexplained. For more recently diagnosed leukaemias, we saw no survival differences for Turkish and non-Turkish children.Our results suggest that nowadays Turkish migrant status has no bearing on the outcome of childhood cancer therapies in Germany. The inclusion of currently more than 95% of all childhood cancer cases in standardised treatment protocols is likely to contribute to this finding.Mortality from childhood cancer has been declining for almost all cancers in most industrialised countries. 5 year-survival probabilities have been improving between 30% and 50% for childhood cancers evaluated by European registries when comparing the period 1978–1982 to the period 1993–1997 [1]; survival probabilities have improved further in more recent years (see for example data from http://www.kinderkrebsregister.de webcite). This is due to increasingly effective and highly standardised therapeutic regimes. Country specific analyses in the Automated Childhood Cancer Information System (ACCIS) database show marked survival probability variations especially between childhood cancer in Eastern and Western-European populations (overall survival 1988–97 East: 62%, West: 75%) [1,2], indicating an influence of socioeconomic conditions at the national level