Cancer Patient-Specific Prognostic Information
Principal Investigator: Jay Piccirillo, M.D.
September 1, 1999 - August 31, 2001

Purpose:
The goal of this project is to develop an interactive, Web-based prognostigram program for adult patients with newly diagnosed cancer. Valid prognostic information will help physicians, individuals and their families make more informed decisions about treatment and improve the care of people with cancer.

Objectives:
-- Year 1 (completed fall 2000): To create patient-specific survival curves from SEER*Stat and Barnes Hospital databases and assess the impact of co-morbidity.
-- Year 2: To test and modify the prognostigrams to maximize utility for patients, families, doctor and underwriters.

Study Methodology:
The prognostic program will create individualized survival curves based on the Cox Proportional Hazards model of survival data from Barnes-Jewish Hospital (BJH) Oncology Data Services (ODS) and SEER*Stat (National Cancer Institute, Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results Software package).

The BJH ODS data set has comorbid health status information, however the SEER*Stat program does not. To add the impact of comorbid health information to the SEER*Stat data set, the Investigators will determine adjusted hazard ratios (i.e., adjusted for other important prognostic factors) for comorbidity from the BJH ODS database. Adjusted survival curves will be generated which take into account the impact of comorbid health information.