2025/05/30 by Waldmann, Annika, Labohm, Louisa, Baltus, Hannah +7
#Datenqualität #Datenzusammenführung #Medicine and health #Nachbeobachtung #Therapie #data merging #data quality #follow-up #population-based cancer registries #populationsbezogene Krebsregister #therapy
paper · doi:10.3205/mibe000274
Background: Germany has a nationwide cancer registration system. Population-based cancer registries are organised at federal state level. To date, research-driven merging of detailed (clinical) data on diagnosis, therapy and progression from several state cancer registries has only rarely been conducted. We examined the feasibility and effort of merging the data as well as the suitability of the data for describing oncological care. Methods: Data on lung cancer (ICD-10 C34) from the diagnosis years 2016–2019 were requested from four population-based cancer registries, processed and merged. If several case-assignable reports on one therapy event were available, these were aggregated to provide the “best information” as part of the pilot study. The data is analysed in a descriptive and explorative manner. Results: Data preparation and collation were time-consuming, but technically feasible. The analysis dataset includes over 61,000 cases of disease with follow-up. Information on at least one type of therapy (surgery, radiotherapy, systemic therapy) is available for 74%. The provided information on the details of the therapies is mostly complete or has only a few missing values. Discussion: Despite some differences in the general conditions of cancer registration in the federal states at the time of this study, differences in data distribution and data quality in the pooled data set were small. The proportion with completely missing information on therapy (26%) could be regarded as high in our opinion, but comparable to other registry studies. Based on the available information, the main features of individual cancer therapies can be described and the information could be used for oncological health services research.