title: The Italian surveillance system for occupational cancers: characteristics, initial results, and future prospects.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Occupational cancer monitoring is important for cancer prevention and public health protection. A surveillance system for identifying occupational cancer risks and cancer cases in Italy that are likely to be of occupational origin using information available in the Italian Social Security archives was created and assessed. Persons employed in the private sector, the employing company, its industrial sector, and years of employment are available in these archives.
  
  
  METHODS
  A method to find known occupational hazards was first tested using a case-control approach. Cases were from six Italian cancer registries (CRs) and controls were sampled from source populations and as "exposure" the economic sector of the employing company was used. The potential of using hospital discharge records as case sources was subsequently assessed: these cover larger populations and are available more quickly than CR case series.
  
  
  RESULTS
  In the CR-based study many known occupational cancer risks related to specific industrial sectors were identified. By using cases from hospital discharge records many industries at risk were identified, as well as cases of recent diagnosis likely to be of occupational origin. However, for some industrial sectors (e.g., the chemical industry) the approach was unable to detect any excess risk. Furthermore, information on employees in important areas like agriculture, self-employment, and the public sector is not available in the Social Security archives.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  This approach appears to be a promising low-cost method for occupational cancer surveillance, at least for some industries, and can be easily implemented in other countries.
authors.affiliation: Environmental Epidemiology and Cancer Registry Unit, National Cancer Institute, Milan, Italy. occam@istitutotumori.mi.it
authors.forename: Paolo
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Crosignani
authors.forename: Stefania
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Massari
authors.forename: Roberto
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Audisio
authors.forename: Plinio
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Amendola
authors.forename: Silvio
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Cavuto
authors.forename: Alessandra
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Scaburri
authors.forename: Paola
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Zambon
authors.forename: Giovanni
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Nedoclan
authors.forename: Fabrizio
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Stracci
authors.forename: Franco
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Pannelli
authors.forename: Marina
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Vercelli
authors.forename: Lucia
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Miligi
authors.forename: Marcello
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Imbriani
authors.forename: Franco
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Berrino
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D016022:Case-Control Studies; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D015994:Incidence; D007558:Italy / Q000453:epidemiology; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009369:Neoplasms / Q000453:epidemiology*; D009784:Occupational Diseases / Q000453:epidemiology*; D010351:Patient Discharge / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D011159:Population Surveillance / Q000379:methods*; D012042:Registries; D018570:Risk Assessment; D012307:Risk Factors