[Federal Cancer Reporting Unit. Surveillance program for cancer registration in Germany]

For 20 years the Federal Cancer Reporting Unit has been processing and analyzing the comprehensive data of the population-based cancer registries in the Federal Republic of Germany. For this purpose the registries transfer their epidemiological records that have been made anonymous to the Federal Cancer Reporting Unit in the Robert Koch Institute once a year. An essential task of the Federal Cancer Reporting Unit is to check the data coherence and especially the completeness of cancer registration. The completeness of registration is estimated by site- and register-specific log-linear models. Based on data from sufficiently complete registries, national incidence rates and their time trends are estimated. Cancer survival rates, lifetime, and age-conditional probability of developing cancer and risk of dying from cancer are calculated and interpreted. The results are published regularly. With increasing completeness of registration, multiple notification of cases in different registries and their exclusion by matching procedures becomes more important. With increasing completeness of registration, further problems can be addressed such as the incidence of rare cancer sites or the analysis of regional patterns of cancer incidence and their underlying causes. Given the different legal requirements of cancer registration in the federal states of Germany, a national institution such as the Federal Cancer Reporting Unit in the Robert Koch Institute, which is not directly involved in cancer registration, can perform these activities best.