BMJ 1994;308:1571 (11 June)

Letters

Clinical oncology information network

EDITOR, - M C Gulliford suggests that the Royal College of Radiologists has dismissed the use of population based registries for evaluating treatment of cancer.1 Many registries have incomplete data that have been extracted by clerks from inadequate hospital case notes. In Gulliford et al's study of bladder cancer the rate of discrepancies between cancer registry data and hospital case notes was 17% for the date of first operation, 12% for the date of first radiotherapy and 16% for the radiotherapy dose.2 Only 15% of patients receiving chemotherapy were recorded as such in the registry; 28% of the case notes gave no data on pathological tumour stage. There was also confusion regarding the classification of superficial and invasive bladder cancers. Another major confounding factor is that important prognostic factors may not be recorded either in cancer registration data or in cancer treatment centres.

The clinical oncology information network project intends . . . [Full text of this article]


Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Complore Complore   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us   Add to Digg Digg   Add to Reddit Reddit   Add to Technorati Technorati    What's this?

Relevant Articles

Overdose of diltiazem
G Y H Lip and R E Ferner
BMJ 1994 309: 193. [Extract] [Full Text]

Clinical oncology information network: Population based registries remain valuable
M C Gulliford, R Carr, C Poynton, D R Glover, and P Quartey
BMJ 1994 308: 597. [Extract] [Full Text]

This article has been cited by other articles:

  • Lip, G Y H, Ferner, R E (1994). Overdose of diltiazem. BMJ 309: 193a-193 [Full text]  
Access jobs at BMJ Careers
Whats new online at Student BMJ