The study, which will appear in the August issue of The Lancet Oncology, revealed that Canada ranked second in patient survival for breast cancer, third for prostate cancer in men and for colorectal cancer in women, and sixth for colorectal cancer in men.
The Concord study, which involved 125 researchers, benchmarked five-year survival rates of two million cancer patients in 31 countries from 1990 to 1994.
In Canada, information was based on cancer registries in Saskatchewan, British Columbia, Manitoba, Ontario and Nova Scotia.
On a global scale, countries that have the highest cancer survival rates are the United States, France and Japan. The U.S. has a higher survival rate than Europe, with Eastern Europe at the lowest. The country that has the lowest survival rate is Algeria.
Australia ranks together with Canada, which have similar health care systems.
