Published in:
01-05-2017 | Head and Neck Oncology
Questioning the Quality of Thyroid Cancer Data: Thoughts from the Commission on Cancer and the National Cancer Database
Authors:
Kathleen K. Thoburn, CTR, Donna M. Gress, RHIT, CTR, Katherine Mallin, PhD, Ashley Loomis, MPH, David P. Winchester, MD, FACS, Daniel P. McKellar, MD, FACS
Published in:
Annals of Surgical Oncology
|
Issue 5/2017
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Excerpt
Cancer registry data is useful for retrospective analysis of treatment patterns and outcome. It is therefore imperative that data submitted to cancer databases such as the National Cancer Database (NCDB) is as accurate and complete as possible. For most cancer types, patients undergo a single operation as part of the treatment of that cancer; however, thyroid cancer is unique because patients often undergo an initial thyroid lobectomy (TL) followed later by a completion total or subtotal thyroidectomy (TT) as indicated by the initial operative pathology results. As a result, cancer registrars abstracting data regarding patients with thyroid cancer would have to assess whether a second procedure was performed in order to provide accurate surgical data to the cancer database. …
