Limited-Duration Prevalence Session

Prevalence is a statistic of primary interest in public health because it identifies the level of burden of disease or health-related events on the population and health care system. Prevalence represents new and pre-existing cases alive on a certain date, in contrast to incidence, which reflects new cases of a disease diagnosed during a given period of time. Prevalence is a function of both the incidence of the disease and survival.

Limited-Duration Prevalence represents the number of people alive on a certain day who had a diagnosis of the disease within the past n years. SEER*Stat's prevalence calculations use the counting method to estimate prevalence from incidence and follow-up data. The counting method estimates prevalence by counting the number of persons who are known to be alive at a specific calendar time and adjusting for those lost to follow-up. For information on other methods for calculating prevalence, or estimating complete from limited-duration prevalence, please visit:

https://surveillance.cancer.gov/prevalence

Note: See Statistics Calculated by SEER*Stat for an overview of the statistics that can be calculated in other types of sessions.

It is recommended that you work through a Limited-Duration Prevalence session in the following order.

Create or open a Limited-Duration Prevalence session
Data tab
Selection tab
Statistic tab
Table tab
Survival Cohorts tab
Output tab
Execute a Session
View the output in a results matrix