Information on chemotherapy and hormone therapy from tumor registry had moderate agreement with chart reviews.
BACKGROUND
Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) cancer registries provide accurate information on cancer surgery and radiation, but the validity of registry data on chemotherapy and hormone therapy for breast cancer has not been well studied. We validated the registry data for chemotherapy and hormone therapy against an independent medical chart review.


METHODS
We identified 1,228 women diagnosed with breast cancer at age > or = 65 in 1993-1999 in the New Mexico SEER Tumor Registry and completed medical chart reviews.


RESULTS
Overall, there was moderate agreement between these two databases on chemotherapy that was received within 6 months of diagnosis. The observed agreement was 96.0%, with a kappa of 0.72 (95% confidence interval: 0.64-0.79). The sensitivity of the registry data for chemotherapy was 70.7% and the specificity was 98.2%. The positive predictive value of the registry data for chemotherapy was 77.8%. The sensitivity of the registry data for hormone therapy was 59.7%, and the specificity was 89.5%. The observed agreement for hormone therapy was 80.0%, with a kappa of 0.52 (0.46-0.57).


CONCLUSIONS
Agreement on chemotherapy and hormone therapy between the New Mexico SEER Tumor Registry and chart reviews was moderate. The preferred approach would be to combine data from different sources to obtain more complete information.
Du
Xianglin L
XL
School of Public Health, Department of Epidemiology, University of Texas Health Science Center, 1200 Herman Pressler Drive, RAS-E631, Houston, TX 77030, USA. xdu@sph.uth.tmc.edu
Key
Charles R
CR
Dickie
Lois
L
Darling
Ronald
R
Delclos
George L
GL
Waller
Kim
K
Zhang
Dong
D
D000368:Aged; D000970:Antineoplastic Agents / Q000627:therapeutic use*; D001943:Breast Neoplasms / Q000188:drug therapy*; D016208:Databases, Factual / Q000592:standards*; D005260:Female; D006728:Hormones / Q000627:therapeutic use*; D006801:Humans; D008499:Medical Records; D009516:New Mexico; D011379:Prognosis; D012042:Registries / Q000592:standards*; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D018426:SEER Program
D000970:Antineoplastic Agents; D006728:Hormones