Wang Y, et al. - Because the critical implications of the expected years of life lost (EYLL) index of cancer for health policy assessments have been largely overlooked, researchers attempted to standardize life lost indices by using the Taiwan Cancer Registry database. To facilitate comparisons among cancer types (903,935 patients from the database), they calculated the EYLL and the age-standardized EYLL. For men, women, and for both combined, the greatest age-standardized EYLL were 15.6 years, 18.0 years, and 16.6 years, respectively, for pancreatic cancer. Unstandardized EYLL of cancer and mean age at diagnosis were negatively correlated. In addition to the usual incidence and mortality rates and their age-standardized counterparts, inclusion of unstandardized EYLL and age-standardized EYLL into routine annual reports of cancer statistics was recommended.