Keywords: Cancer, Leukemia, Survival
Among children, Leukemia is one of the leading causes of death and among all, cancer is the source of nearly a quarter of deaths annually in the United States. The purpose of this research is to study and visualize the treatments effect on survival time of young leukemia patients. The primary treatment options for leukemia patients are chemotherapy, radiation, or a combination of the two. For each state, incidence totals are mapped onto the U.S. to give insight as to where the observations primarily originate from. Our preliminary analysis shows notable differences in survival time between the treatment combinations with some distinct clusters of patients receiving certain treatment combinations based on the time period they were diagnosed. A comparable trend line was found when visualizing survival probability over time after diagnosis given the treatment combination received. Further analysis of survival probability indicated an overall increasing pattern for more recently diagnosed patients; however, there is an equally strong, increasing trend of new patients diagnosed with leukemia in more recent years. To gain greater significance and insight into our results of treatment effects, we advance on these findings using survival modeling. Data for this study is extracted from National Cancer institute’s SEER (1973-2014) program.