A blind review and an informed review of interval breast cancer cases in the Limburg screening programme, the Netherlands.

Objective: To investigate the proportion of interval breast cancers that could have been detected at the previous screening examination, and to gain more insight into the characteristics of these tumours.

Setting: Breast cancer screening programme in mid- and southern Limburg, the Netherlands.

Method: Firstly, previous screening mammograms of 92 interval cancer cases were blindly reread by the radiologists from two different units as part of their daily screening workload.

Evaluation of the effect of breast cancer screening by record linkage with the cancer registry, The Netherlands.

Objective: To evaluate the effect of a breast cancer screening programme by record linkage with the cancer registry.

Setting: Breast cancer screening programme in mid- and southern Limburg, the Netherlands.

Methods: The data files of the breast cancer screening programme and the Maastricht Cancer Registry were linked in order to evaluate the effect of breast cancer screening.

Validity of the stage of lung cancer in records of the Maastricht cancer registry, The Netherlands.

Information collected in a clinical study on a random sample of 99 patients with inoperable lung cancer, treated with radiotherapy, was compared to the staging information in the Maastricht cancer registry. Validity of sex (0% disagreements), date of birth (0%), histology (1% major disagreements) and treatment (1%) was high, but the validity of stage was lower: 12% major and 23% minor disagreements. The misclassification of stage did not result in a shift in the survival estimates.

Age-specific differences in the diagnostics and treatment of cancer patients aged 50 years and older in the province of Limburg, The Netherlands.

Background: In the Netherlands, 45% of all cancer cases occur in men and women aged 70 years and older. Since the population is ageing and cancer incidence rises with age, the number of new malignancies in the elderly is increasing. It has become apparent that there is a relationship between age at diagnosis and the treatment received.

Quality of cancer registry data: a comparison of data provided by clinicians with those of registration personnel.

The quality of cancer registry data is of great importance to the usefulness of a cancer registry. To investigate the quality of its data the IKL cancer registry (Integraal Kankercentrum Limburg) performed a study with the aim of comparing data supplied by clinicians with data collected by registration personnel. Twenty clinicians reabstracted the information of a random sample of about ten of their patients, who were diagnosed with cancer in 1989 or 1990.