Colon cancer data
Table of Contents
Description
These are data from one of the first successful trials of adjuvant chemotherapy for colon cancer. Levamisole is a low-toxicity compound previously used to treat worm infestations in animals; 5-FU is a moderately toxic (as these things go) chemotherapy agent. Patients were randomized to observation only, to levamisole alone (50 mg orally three times/d for 3 days, repeated every 2 weeks for 1 year), or to this regimen of levamisole plus fluorouracil (450 mg/m2 body surface area intravenously daily for 5 days and then, beginning at 28 days, weekly for 48 weeks). The main outcome of interests were cancer recurrence and death. Several baseline covariates were also recorded. See e.g. Moertel et al. (1995) for details.
Variables
| Variable | Explanation (Unit) |
|---|---|
| id | patient id |
| rx | treatment group: Obs (Nothing, i.e.,"Observation" only), Lev(amisole), Lev(amisole)+5-FU |
| sex | 1=male, 0=female |
| age | age in years |
| obstruct | obstruction of colon by tumor (1=yes,0=no) |
| perfor | perforation of colon (1=yes,0=no) |
| adhere | adherence to nearby organs (1=yes,0=no) |
| nodes | number of lymph nodes with detectable cancer |
| differ | differentiation of tumour (1=well, 2=moderate, 3=poor) |
| extent | Extent of local spread (1=submucosa, 2=muscle, 3=serosa, 4=contiguous structures) |
| surg | time from surgery to registration (0=short, 1=long) |
| node4 | more than 4 positive lymph nodes (1=yes,0=no) |
| time | days until recurrence, death or end of follow-up (whichever comes first) |
| status | indicates what is observed at "time": 1=recurrence, 2= death (without recurrence) and 0=censored |
| timeD | days until death (before or after recurrence) or end of follow-up (whichever comes first) |
| statusD | indicates what is observed at "timeD": 1=death, 0=censored |
| timeR | days until recurrence or end of follow-up (whichever comes first) |
| statusR | indicates what is observed at "timeR": 1=recurrence, 0=censored (i.e. no recurrence observed within "timeR" days) |
Data download
| Format | Download |
|---|---|
| text (csv) | colon2.csv |
| rda (for R) | colon2.rda |
Load data into R
load(url("http://paulblanche.com/files/colon2.rda")) head(colon2)
References
Moertel et al. "Fluorouracil plus levamisole as effective adjuvant therapy after resection of stage III colon carcinoma: a final report." Annals of internal medicine 122.5 (1995): 321-326.
Source
The data are a reformatted version of the 'colon' data from the R package survival.