The five-year survival rate for most cancers of the blood has increased over the last decade, however survival rates still vary greatly throughout Europe and this is most likely because of differences in the quality of treatment available, a new study has found.

This marks the largest population-based study of blood cancer survival among adults in Europe to date. Thirty cancer registries in 20 countries were analysed to see how the five-year survival rate had changed between 1997 and 2008.

This involved over 560,000 patients aged 15 and older who had been diagnosed with 11 different types of blood cancer, including different types of leukaemia and lymphoma.

The study included patients from Northern Ireland, England, Denmark, Norway, Iceland, Austria, Bulgaria, Lithuania, Slovenia and Malta.

"The good news is that five-year survival for most cancers of the blood has increased over the past 11 years, most likely reflecting the approval of new targeted drugs in the early 2000s such as rituximab for non-Hodgkin lymphoma and imatinib for chronic myeloid leukaemia," said the study's leader, Dr Milena Sant, of the Fondazione IRCCS Istituto Nazionale dei Tumori in Milan, Italy.

However, she noted that there continues to be ‘persistent differences between regions'.

"For example, the uptake and use of new technologies and effective treatments has been far slower in eastern Europe than other regions. This might have contributed to the large differences in the management and outcomes of patients," she said.

The study found that the biggest improvements in survival between 1997 and 2008 were found in northern, central and eastern Europe, even though adults in eastern Europe continue to have lower survival rates than anywhere else.

Survival rates have been slowest to improve in southern Europe and the UK.

The study also found that the risk of death within five years of a diagnosis fell for all types of blood cancer between 1997 and 2008, except myelodysplastic syndromes. However, some regions, such as eastern Europe, continued to have a much higher excess risk of death than other regions, such as the UK.

The researchers believe that the reasons for these differences in survival are due to inequalities in the provision of care and inequalities in the availability and use of new treatments.

"We know that rituximab, imatinib, thalidomide, and bortezomib were first made available for general use in Europe in 1997, 2001, 1998, and 2003, respectively. The years following general release of these drugs coincided with large increases in survival for chronic myeloid leukaemia, diffuse large B-cell lymphoma, and follicular lymphoma; with a smaller but still significant survival increase for multiple myeloma plasmacytoma," the researchers pointed out.

However, they noted that the uptake and use of these drugs was not the same across Europe. For example, the market uptake of some of them, including rituximab and imatinib, was lower in eastern Europe, which may explain why survival rates were also lower in that region.

Details of these findings are published in the journal, The Lancet Oncology.