The Utility of Pathology Reports to Identify Persons With Cancer Recurrence

Cancer recurrence is an important measure of the impact of cancer treatment. However, no population-based data on recurrence are available. Pathology reports could potentially identify cancer recurrences. Their utility to capture recurrences is unknown.

This analysis assesses the sensitivity of pathology reports to identify patients with cancer recurrence and the stage at recurrence.

The study includes patients with recurrent breast (n=214) or colorectal (n=203) cancers.

This retrospective analysis included patients from a population-based cancer registry who were part of the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research (PCOR) Study, a project that followed cancer patients in-depth for 5 years after diagnosis to identify recurrences.

Information abstracted from pathology reports for patients with recurrence was compared with their PCOR data (gold standard) to determine what percent had a pathology report at the time of recurrence, the sensitivity of text in the report to identify recurrence, and if the stage at recurrence could be determined from the pathology report.

One half of cancer patients had a pathology report near the time of recurrence. For patients with a pathology report, the report's sensitivity to identify recurrence was 98.1% for breast cancer cases and 95.7% for colorectal cancer cases. The specific stage at recurrence from the pathology report had a moderate agreement with gold-standard data.

Pathology reports alone cannot measure population-based recurrence of solid cancers but can identify specific cohorts of recurrent cancer patients. As electronic submission of pathology reports increases, these reports may identify specific recurrent patients in near real-time.