Clinical highlights from the National Cancer Data Base, 1999

The National Cancer Data Base (NCDB), a joint project of the Commission on Cancer of the American College of Surgeons and the American Cancer Society, collects and analyzes data from a wide variety of sources throughout the United States, including small community hospitals. Due to this unique reporting system, individual facilities can compare their own data with the aggregate data from the NCDB, using their findings to evaluate local patient care practices. This article highlights the principal findings of the NCDB and Patient Care Evaluation articles published in 1998 on breast, prostate, cervical, endometrial, gallbladder, head and neck, nasopharyngeal, rectal, thyroid, and vaginal cancers, as well as on melanoma, brain tumors, and Hodgkin's disease. With more than five million cancer cases in the NCDB for the years between 1985 and 1995, sufficient numbers of even rare cancers have been accrued to permit some types of epidemiologic and clinical assessments.