Improving but Inferior Survival in Patients with Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia in Taiwan: A Population-Based Study, 1990–2004

BACKGROUND: Chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) is much less prevalent in Asian countries. Whether there are differences in survival outcomes between the East and West, however, remain unclear. METHODS: The survival data for CLL patients identified in the Taiwan Cancer Registry database between 1990 and 2004, together with corresponding data in the US Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results database, were retrieved. The relative survivals (RS, adjusted for the expected survival in the general population) were estimated in patients diagnosed in three 5-year periods of time. RESULTS: CLL drastically shortened patients’ life expectancy; more importantly, this negative impact in Taiwan was much larger than that in the US: the 5-year RS in Taiwan and US were 59% and 76%, and the 10-year RS, 45% and 56%, respectively. Nevertheless, survival in Taiwan was better in the periods after 1995 (5-year RS, from 53.0% to 60.6%), a time period corresponding to the introduction of the Taiwan National Health Insurance scheme. Such improvement was largely due to decreased mortality in patients younger than 65 (5-year RS, from 53.5% to 69.1%). Despite the improvement, patients’ RS in Taiwan in recent periods remain steadily 15∼20% inferior to that in the US in both younger and older patient groups. CONCLUSIONS: The improved RS in Taiwan implies that therapeutic advances are changing the prognosis of CLL. The stable RS gap between Taiwanese and the US patients suggests the existence of an ethnic difference in CLL patients’ outcomes.