SURVSOFT-Software for nonparametric survival analysis.

Long-term observed and relative survival are important outcome measures of cancer patient care reported routinely by many cancer registries, but no commercial statistical software exists for estimating relative survival or performing period survival analysis. The programs publicly available focus only on certain methods, require specific input data formats and often are macros or functions which require underlying software packages. Here we introduce SURVSOFT, a comprehensive, user-friendly Windows program with graphical user interface. It can handle different input data formats and incorporates a variety of nonparametric statistical methods for survival data analysis. SURVSOFT produces high-resolution graphs, which can be printed, saved or exported to be used with standard graphics editors. The use of SURVSOFT is illustrated by the analysis of survival data from the Bavarian Cancer Registry.