Socio-economic inequalities: a review of methodological issues and the relationships with cancer survival

During the past few decades, many studies on socio-economic factors and health outcomes have been developed using various methodologies with differing approaches. A bibliographic research in MEDLINE/PubMed and SCOPUS was carried out for the period 2000-2011 to describe the influence of socio-economic status (SES) on cancer survival, in particular with reference to the outcome of European research results and the results of some cases of other Western studies. This review is divided into two sections: the first describing the different approaches of the study on individuals and populations of the concept of "social class" as well as methods used to measure the association between deprivation and health (i.e. ecological level studies, deprivation indexes, etc.); and the second discussing the association between socio-economic factors and cancer survival, describing the roles of various determinants of differences in survival, such as clinical and pathological prognostic factors, together with consideration of diagnosis and treatment and some patients' characteristics.