Skip Navigation


Japanese Journal of Clinical Oncology Advance Access originally published online on December 5, 2008
Japanese Journal of Clinical Oncology 2009 39(2):127-131; doi:10.1093/jjco/hyn138
This Article
Right arrow Full Text Freely available
Right arrow FREE Full Text (PDF) Freely available
Right arrow All Versions of this Article:
39/2/127    most recent
hyn138v1
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Similar articles in PubMed
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Add to My Personal Archive
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrow Request Permissions
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by Tsutsui, A.
Right arrow Articles by Tsukuma, H.
Right arrow Search for Related Content
PubMed
Right arrow PubMed Citation
Right arrow Articles by Tsutsui, A.
Right arrow Articles by Tsukuma, H.
Related Collections
Right arrow Epidemiology Note
Social Bookmarking
Add to CiteULike   Add to Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us  
What's this?


© The Author (2008). Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved

Trends of Centralization of Childhood Cancer Treatment Between 1975 and 2002 in Osaka, Japan

Anna Tsutsui1, Yuko Ohno1, Junichi Hara2, Yuri Ito3 and Hideaki Tsukuma3

1 Department of Mathematical Health Science, Course of Health Science, Graduate School of Medicine, Osaka University
2 Department of Pediatric Hematology/Oncology Children’s Medical Center, Osaka City General Hospital
3 Department of Cancer Control and Statistics, Osaka Medical Center for Cancer and Cardiovascular Diseases, Osaka, Japan

For reprints and all correspondence: Yuko Ohno, Department of Mathematical Health Science, Course of Health Science, Graduate School of Medicine, Osaka University, 1-7 Yamadaoka, Suita, Osaka, Japan. E-mail: ohno{at}sahs.med.osaka-u.ac.jp

Received June 25, 2008; accepted November 1, 2008

Objective: To analyze the tendency to centralize childhood cancer treatment among cancer treatment hospitals in Osaka, Japan over a 28-year period.

Methods: The subjects were patients under the age of 15, newly diagnosed with cancer in Osaka between 1975 and 2002 (n = 4738). They were categorized into three groups by the time diagnosed (1975–84, 1985–93 and 1994–2002). The International Classification of Childhood Cancer was used as the disease classification. The degree of centralization was examined using a Pareto analysis, the Gini coefficient and the annual average number of cases per hospital.

Results: During this period, the number of children with cancer in Osaka has decreased by nearly half, from 2.1 to 1.2 million and the number of hospitals treating childhood cancer decreased from 37 to 20. However, the Pareto curve and Gini coefficient were almost constant (0.747, 0.737, 0.756 in Gini coefficient for the three diagnosed periods). The annual average numbers of cases per hospital were much low and marginally increased from 5.6 during 1975–84 to 6.1 during 1994–2002 in the hospitals that treated 90% of all cancers.

Conclusions: The degree of centralization appeared to be almost constant from 1975 to 2002 regardless of the decrease in hospitals treating cancer patients.

Key Words: childhood cancer • centralization • population-based cancer registry


Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us    What's this?




Disclaimer: Please note that abstracts for content published before 1996 were created through digital scanning and may therefore not exactly replicate the text of the original print issues. All efforts have been made to ensure accuracy, but the Publisher will not be held responsible for any remaining inaccuracies. If you require any further clarification, please contact our Customer Services Department.