The long-run impact of new medical ideas on cancer survival and mortality

We test the hypothesis that the arrival of new medical ideas played a major role in the long-run increase in US cancer survival and decline in cancer mortality, by investigating whether the types of cancer (breast, colon, lung, etc.) subject to greater penetration of new ideas, measured using the MEDLINE/PubMED database, had larger subsequent survival gains and mortality reductions, controlling for changing incidence. The 5-year survival rate is strongly positively related to the novelty of ideas in articles published 12–24 years earlier; evidence from case studies that it takes a long time for research evidence to reach clinical practice. Between 1994 and 2008, the 5-year observed survival rate for all cancer sites combined increased from 52.1% to 61.2%. The estimates suggest that about 70% of this increase may have been due to the increase in the novelty of medical ideas 12–24 years earlier. The number of years of potential life lost from cancer before ages 80 and 70 and the number of cancer deaths are inversely related to the novelty of ideas in articles published 12–24 years earlier, conditional on the number of patients diagnosed 1–10 years before and their mean age at time of diagnosis.