Survival Analysis of Cancer Patients in North Eastern Nigeria from 2004 – 2017 – A Kaplan - Meier Method

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Cancer is a deadly malignant disease and is prevalent in Sub Saharan Africa. The North East part of Nigeria in particular and the country, in general, are struggling to cope with the increasing burden of cancer and other communicable and non-communicable diseases. The situation is worsened by the ongoing insurgency and terrorist activities in the area.
 AIM: The aim of this paper is to present the research findings from a cohort study aimed at the analysis of the estimation of the survivorship time of the real data of cancer patients in the North-eastern part of Nigeria and to establish if the insurgency in the region has contributed negatively to the life expectancy of its inhabitants.
 MATERIAL AND METHODS: The record of 1,090 patients from medical records departments of the University of Maiduguri Teaching Hospital (UMTH), located in Maiduguri, the capital city of Borno State in northeast Nigeria was obtained. The record showed patients that were diagnosed and died of one type of cancer or the other from 2004 to 2017. All the cancer cases included in the present study were grouped into sex, age, marital status, occupation, date admitted and date of death/discharge. Descriptive statistics and Kaplan-Meier method were used to analyse the data using SPSS version 23 while Microsoft EXCEL and Minitab 16.0 were used for data cleansing and organisation.
 RESULTS: Of the 1,090 patients analysed, 920 (84.40%) experienced the event, i.e. death, while 170 (15.60%) patients were censored. The data were analysed based on the ages and sex of the patients. 50.20% of the patients were of ages 21-50 years. The proportions of patients in this age bracket surviving past 7 days are 75%, while those between ages 80 years and above is 12 days. Others are of survival time of 5 days (ages 0-20 years) and 7 days (51-79 years). Using sex, 75% of the patients’ survival time is 7 days in the case of male and 6 days for females. It is safe to say that the survival time for cancer patients of the university the Maiduguri is 6 days and the result reflects the Northeastern part of Nigeria. This is because the hospital is one of few tertiary healthcare facilities in that area and consequently, cancer cases are often referred there.
 CONCLUSION: Cancer incidence is high, and the probability of survival reduces as the survival time increases. This is a dire situation in need of urgent intervention from the government, groups and individuals to tackle the scourge of cancer, thereby improving on the life expectancy battered by the ongoing Boko Haram insurgency in that region.

Predictors of Mortality From a Population-Based Cancer Registry Data in Jos, Nigeria: A Resource-Limited Setting

“…Probability of survival among the HIV positive and HIV negative cohorts was not significantly different (Pr = 0.072). This is contrary to most reports on mortality after cancer diagnosis which showed higher mortality among HIV seropositive cancer patients than their HIV sero-negative counterparts (16)(17)(18)(19)(20). In a study on the contribution of HIV infection to mortality among cancer patients in Uganda, a more than 2-fold increased risk of death among the HIV-infected cancer patients compared to HIVuninfected cancer patients was reported.…”

“…In this 2-year retrospective cohort study, the significant proportion of cancer patients observed with unknown HIV status 371 (35.6%) could be attributed to the fact that testing for HIV status of cancer patients was not considered as a standard of care in the management of cancer patients in the various health institutions in our setting. It is now being advocated that healthcare providers should request for HIV testing for all cancer patients being managed as HIV has been well-documented to have a significant impact on ultimate survival outcomes of cancer patients (8)(9)(10)(11)(12)(13)(14)(15)(16)(17)(18)(19). All those cases identified in this study with known HIV status had indicated their status in the course of cancer care and recorded in the registry as such.…”

Hepatitis E Infection in Nigeria: A Systematic Review

“…The absence of numerous studies places undue restrictions on the use of different statistical techniques. The statistical techniques are needed to reveal hidden patterns as long as the sample size is appreciably high [22], [23], [24], [25], [26], [27], [28]. The 7 articles were analysed using Minitab version 17.0, binary logistic regression was used for the analysis, and this was as a result of splitting of the target groups into two distinct and non-overlapping classes.…”

Review on the Reliability of Medical Contents on YouTube

“…Generally, YouTube has been helpful in recruiting patients for medical research, peer support, advancing patient loyalty, patient health education, modulating patient attitude and patient empowerment. Others are publicizing current research on medical issues, including treatment options and creating awareness on some health-related issues [82][83][84][85] Descriptive statistics were useful in discerning patterns in the study, which has been applied to these few selected works [86][87][88]. The present research corroborates similar findings on the evaluation of online contents [89][90][91] The assessment of the quality of medical information for patient education available on YouTube has been a subject of intense debate [92][93][94][95], and this review has succeeded in categorizing the views into groups.…”