BACKGROUND Benford's law states that the distribution of the first digit different from 0 [first significant digit (FSD)] in many collections of numbers is not uniform. The aim of this study is to evaluate whether population-based cancer incidence rates follow Benford's law, and if this can be used in their data quality check process. METHODS We sampled 43 population-based cancer registry pop...

In recent years, medical foundations have become increasingly influential, and now play an instrumental and integral role in the research and development of their disease area of interest. While some foundations have directly invested in taking drug candidates to the clinic, others have focused on creating specific tools for accelerating the identification and development of effective treatment...

BACKGROUND Patient registries represent a well-established methodology for prospective data collection with a wide array of applications for clinical research and health care administration. An examination and synthesis of registry stakeholder perspectives has not been previously reported in the literature. METHODS To inform the development of future neurological registries we examined stakeh...

OBJECTIVE In many countries, the cervical cancer prevalence has declined but less information about the changes is available in China. This study aims to understand the epidemiological characteristics and trend of cervical cancer in China. METHODS Cervical cancer data of 11 cancer registries during 1988-2002 in China were analyzed. The age and urban/rural differences and trend of cervical can...

In an era of ongoing improvement in cancer patient survival, available long-term survival figures from cancer registries are often outdated and too pessimistic for two reasons: first, delay in availability of cancer registry data, typically in the order of a few years, and, second, application of cohort-based methods of survival analysis, which provide survival estimates for patients diagnosed ...

AIMS To investigate whether length of employment as a cabin attendant was related to breast cancer risk, when adjusted for reproductive factors. METHODS Age matched case-control study nested in a cohort of cabin attendants. The cases were found from a nationwide cancer registry (followed up to end of year 2000) and the reproductive factors (age at first childbirth and number of children) from...

The European Union (EU) policy for healthcare requires the establishment of a system of European Reference Networks, union-wide information databases, and registries for rare diseases (RDs) based on shared criteria. In pursuing its goals, the 'Building Consensus and Synergies for the EU Registration of RD Patients in Europe' (EPIRARE) project convened a meeting with experts of the competent hea...

BACKGROUND Previous studies have proposed that having parents out of work may influence adolescent illness behaviour and school attendance. However, prior research investigating this question has been limited by retrospective reporting and case control studies. In a large epidemiological study we investigated whether parental work absence was associated with symptom complaints and increased sch...

Population-based cancer registries rely on various methods to assign Hispanic ethnic identifiers to patients in the registry. The methods may result in misclassification of patient ethnic identities. Such misclassification may obscure the real incidence of cervical cancer among Hispanic women. This review summarizes previous literature on the accuracy of methods used to ascertain Hispanic ethni...

In order to compare survival rates in Japan with those in the USA and European countries, we abstracted the 5-year relative survival rate from several data sources. Survival rates of cancer diagnosed in 1995–99 in the USA were abstracted from 18 cancer registries in the Surveillance Epidemiology and End Results (SEER) data (1). Survival rates of cancer diagnosed in 1995–99 in the UK and Norway ...