STNS

STNS is a user-written Stata program, developed by Clerc-Urmès and colleagues (2014), that implements the Pohar Perme estimator of net survival. The files for this program can be downloaded and installed by running the command ‘ssc install stns’ in Stata.

Net survival is the cumulative probability of survival up to a given point in time after diagnosis, after correction for other causes of death (background mortality). Background mortality is taken from life tables of all-cause mortality rates in the general population. Net survival is an estimator that was developed for population-based cancer research, where the cause of death is often unavailable or unreliable. Net survival enables robust comparison of cancer survival between populations with different background mortality, either between countries, or between population sub-groups or over time within a country.

References and further reading

Pohar Perme M, Stare J, Estève J. On estimation in relative survival. Biometrics. 2012; 68: 113-20

Clerc-Urmès I, Grzebyk M, Hédelin, G. Net survival estimation with stns. Stata Journal 2014; 14: 87-102