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. There
are two records per person, one for recurrence and one for death
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
etype:
event type: 1=recurrence,2=death
Note
The study is originally described in Laurie (1989).
The main report is found in Moertel (1990). This data set is closest
to that of the final report in Moertel (1991).
A version of the data with less follow-up time was used in the
paper by Lin (1994).
References
JA Laurie, CG Moertel, TR Fleming, HS Wieand, JE Leigh, J Rubin,
GW McCormack, JB Gerstner, JE Krook and J Malliard. Surgical
adjuvant therapy of large-bowel carcinoma: An evaluation of
levamisole and the combination of levamisole and fluorouracil:
The North Central Cancer Treatment Group and the Mayo Clinic.
J Clinical Oncology, 7:1447-1456, 1989.
DY Lin. Cox regression analysis of multivariate failure time data:
the marginal approach. Statistics in Medicine, 13:2233-2247, 1994.
CG Moertel, TR Fleming, JS MacDonald,
DG Haller, JA Laurie, PJ Goodman, JS Ungerleider,
WA Emerson, DC Tormey, JH Glick, MH Veeder and JA Maillard.
Levamisole and fluorouracil for adjuvant therapy of
resected colon carcinoma. New England J of Medicine, 332:352-358,
1990.
CG Moertel, TR Fleming, JS MacDonald, DG Haller, JA Laurie, CM Tangen,
JS Ungerleider, WA Emerson, DC Tormey, JH Glick, MH Veeder and JA
Maillard, Fluorouracil plus Levamisole as an effective adjuvant
therapy after resection of stage II colon carcinoma: a final report.
Annals of Internal Med, 122:321-326, 1991.