Comprehensive Databases: A Cautionary Note

Excerpt

Over the last decade, there has been in an increase in the number and availability of registries of cancer patients. Two of the more commonly accessed sources of cancer patient data are the Surveillance Epidemiology and End Results (SEER) and the National Cancer Data Base (NCDB). These two databases differ fundamentally in how patient data are acquired; the NCDB is hospital based, while SEER is population based. Although this difference in method of data acquisition is extremely different, there are commonalities, both positive and negative, when large data sets such as these are queried to ascertain clinical outcomes on cancer patients. The large number of patients available for analysis allows for a broader perspective on treatment patterns and epidemiology. Additionally, it allows the opportunity to study rare cancers and to perform subset analysis of specific groups within a common cancer (i.e., postmastectomy radiotherapy in patients with locally advanced breast cancer; adjuvant chemotherapy in stage II colon cancer). Most recently, these types of data sets are being used to provide cancer-specific outcomes and minimum performance benchmarks, which are being made available for quality assessment and quality improvement. …