Regional diversity and breadth of the National Cancer Data Base

Area of Science:

• Oncology
• Public Health
• Health Services Research

Background:

• The National Cancer Data Base (NCDB) is a joint project of the Commission on Cancer and the American Cancer Society.
• It serves as a cancer management and outcomes database for healthcare organizations, facilitating self-assessment.
• This article focuses on the most current data from 1995.

Purpose of the Study:

• To describe the 1995 data from the National Cancer Data Base.
• To assess the representativeness of reported cancer cases at regional and state levels.
• To analyze the diversity of cancer reporting characteristics within regions.

Main Methods:

• Data collection involved 7 calls for data between 1989 and 1995, resulting in 5,558,389 cancer patient reports.
• A total of 1849 hospital cancer registries participated in the data collection.
• Analysis focused on 655,627 cases reported by 1114 hospitals for the 1995 diagnosis year.

Main Results:

• Hospitals varied widely in size and type, including NCI-recognized cancer centers, government hospitals, and community hospitals.
• Distributions of cases by primary site and age were remarkably similar across six U.S. geographic regions.
• Cancer cases were reported from diverse income strata and ethnicities within each region, though some states had few reported cases.

Conclusions:

• The reported cancer cases are likely representative of U.S. regional cancer patients in terms of cancer types and patient ages.
• Cancer reporting characteristics, including patient and institutional factors, appear diverse within each region.
• The data suggests the NCDB is a valuable resource for understanding regional cancer trends.