Population-based overall survival rates for childhood cancer vary across geographical regions within and outside Europe; this variation could be at least partly explained by differences in tumour stage at diagnosis.
The International Benchmarking of Childhood Cancer Survival by Stage, also called The BENCHISTA Project is a collaboration involving 70 population-based cancer registries from 25 European countries, Australia, Brazil, Japan and Canada. The BENCHISTA project aims to apply the International Consensus Toronto Staging Guidelines to six solid tumours to assess the extent of variation in stage at diagnosis and analyse how this contributes to survival differences. We also plan to assess the feasibility of cancer registries to collect other types of information including data on relapse, non-stage prognostic factors, cause of death and treatment modalities.
The BENCHISTA Project is currently receiving depersonalised, patient-level datasets including Toronto stage from cancer registries. More than 10,000 cases of these six tumour types diagnosed between 2014-2107 are being prepared for further analysis. This collaborative effort represents the first step towards understanding reasons for variation in overall survival for childhood cancer at a population-level, strengthening relations between cancer registries, clinicians, public/parent/patient representatives and other stakeholders to encourage research and outcome improvement. For more information, please visit the website.