Re: Re: Source of cancer data

["John Williams" <JohnWi@law.com>]

The incidence data reflects new cancers that arise that year.  The 

mortality data reflect people who have died that year.



The SEER data  http://seer.cancer.gov/ is better because the NCI 

funds a few states to track incidence data with a high degree of 

confidence.  They have abstractors out in the field looking at 

pathology reports etc.  Many states have cancer registries, but the 

data is not as good generally because they rely on death certificates 

and one does not know that what they died from was or was not their 

orginal cancer.  The SEER database goes one step further and tries to 

identify the original cancer. For example, someone can have an 

initial lung cancer, but show as a cause of death heart failure 

because the cancer ate throught the aorta.



That is why Smith et al found a good bit of difference between their 

SEER data and Cohen's data from his atlas.



The SEER Registries serve as the source information to track changes 

in cancers nationwide.







John WIlliams  





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