Sex Differences in Cancer Incidence, Mortality, and Survival: Methodological Perspectives
Description:... Population-based cancer registries across the world represent an important source of information on cancer incidence; these are used for many purposes, including a region-wise comparison of trends for different types of cancers and for generating hypotheses. Among the available statistics for studying cancer trends, the most valuable data is of ‘incidence rate’ that comes from recording every case of cancer in a defined geography in a specified time. But there is a downside in relying on published incidence rates from cancer registries. Namely, the published rates are not only determined by the real underlying cancer incidence rates, but also on such regional phenomena as access to diagnostic services/practices in the medical communities, quality and completeness of reporting of cancer diagnoses to the local cancer registries, quality of the cancer registry itself, and data management systems. These methodological aspects can vary from country to country and can even vary within countries.
Show description