Outcomes for lymphoid malignancies in the Nurses' Health Study (NHS) as compared to the Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results (SEER) Program

Vital statistics for the lymphoid malignancies obtained from the Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results (SEER) Program have seldom been directly compared to data from alternative national databases. While SEER is recognized as the standard, some lymphoid malignancies-especially the chronic ones--may be underreported. We compared the incidence, all-cause and cause-specific mortality for Hodgkin's lymphoma (HL), non-Hodgkin's lymphoma (NHL), multiple myeloma (MM) and chronic lymphocytic leukaemia (CLL) in SEER to that in the Nurses' Health Study (NHS), a national cohort study of 121,700 female registered nurses, matching for age and race. In over 2.5 million person-years, the incidence of HL was the same as in SEER (SIR=1.01 [0.75, 1.26]), while the incidence of NHL, CLL and MM were slightly higher. All-cause mortality was lower for the lymphoid malignancies except for MM, which was the same; there were no differences in cause-specific mortality, except for MM (HR=1.26 [1.07, 1.48]). Our analysis suggests that, at least among white women, SEER is a reliable data source with respect to lymphoid malignancies.