Modelling Survival Among Patients With Prostate Cancer in Kenya

Abstract

Prostate cancer is among the most common types of cancers in men in Kenya and worldwide. The exact cause of the prostate cancer is unclear. However, previous research has indicated that there are risk factors likely to be associated with prostate cancer such as: old age, race where black people are at more risk, family history, obesity among other risk factors. In the year 2018 among men, it was the second most diagnosed cancer (1.3 million, 14.5%) after lung cancer (1.4 million, 15.5%) worldwide This study aims to compare survival between clinical stages and treatment categories. The study further aims to investigate the impact age on survival among prostate cancer patients in Kenya. The study used secondary population-based prostate cancer data obtained from the KEMRI National Cancer Registry. Kaplan-Meier estimation method was used to compare survival function for clinical stage and treatment. Cox proportional hazards regression model was used to model age against survival time. The Cox proportional hazards regression results checking for association between survival time and age were as follows: HR = 1.032 (CI: 1.004 – 1.061). Thus for each additional year an individual diagnosed with prostate cancer is 3.2% more likely to die per unit time (in days). However, the Kaplan-Meier results showed no signi cant di erences in survival for clinical stage and treatment type categories.