QUALITY OF PROSTATE-CANCER DATA IN THE CANCER REGISTRY OF NORWAY

Completeness of reporting and internal validity of the coding of prost ate cancer in the Cancer Registry (CR) in Norway were examined. Data w ere matched and evaluated against diagnostic indices at eight selected hospitals in the country and against death certificates from Statisti cs Norway. Validity control was based on detailed reanalysis of an app roximately 1% sample of the registered data during the period 1957-198 6. The deficiency in reporting of prostate cancer was less than 1%. Th e grave deficiencies in hospital patient registers were considered to be of non-systematic nature and should, therefore, not impair the reli ability of our investigation of incompleteness. The validity control r evealed errors in 0.5% of the data elements, or, illustrated different ly, 6% of the patient files had an error, of importance or not, in one of the data elements. One false positive registration was found among 298 controlled patient files (0.3%).