Mining Association Rules in the BCCA Liver Cancer Data Set

The objective of this study is to apply data mining techniques to determine factors that are commonly associated with liver cancer incidence, using an anonymized data set of 6064 patients from the British Columbia Cancer Agency (BCCA). The association rules indicate that in BC the patient demographic factors associated with increased liver cancer include: age ranges 60-69, male gender, and geographic location in the Greater Vancouver area. The main factors associated with decreased survivability in BC were being male and in the age range 70-79. In the Yukon, being male and in the age range 60-69 was the main factor associated with both increased incidence of liver cancer and decreased survivability.