title: Pancreatic cancer mortality and misclassification--bayesian analysis.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Pancreatic cancer is a fatal cancer with a 5-year survival of only about 4% for all tumors. Mortality is a familiar projection to address the burden of cancers, but according to the Iranian death registry, about 20% of death statistics are still recorded in misclassified categories. The aim of this study was to estimate pancreatic cancer mortality for Iranian population, using a bayesian approach in order to revise this misclassification.
  
  
  METHODS
  National Death Statistics reported by the Ministry of Health from 1999 to 2004, stratified by age group, sex and cause of death, were the basis for this analysis. Pancreas cancer [ICD-10; 25] were expressed as the annual mortality rates/100,000, overall, by sex and by age group (<50 and ≥50 years of age) and age standardized rate (ASR). The bayesian approach to correct and account for misclassification effects in Poisson count regression was employed with a beta prior to estimate the mortality rate by age and sex group.
  
  
  RESULTS
  According to the bayesian analysis, there were between 20 to 30 percent underreported mortality records in deaths due to pancreatic cancer and the rate decreased slightly during the years of the study.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Our findings suggest a substantial undercount of pancreatic cancer mortality in the Iranian population. Therefore policy makers who determine research and treatment priorities should note these underreported data for death rates.
authors.affiliation: Department of Pathology, Research Center for Gastroenterology and Liver Diseases, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Iran.
authors.forename: Afsoon
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Taghavi
authors.forename: Zeinab
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Fazeli
authors.forename: Mohsen
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Vahedi
authors.forename: Ahmad Reza
authors.initials: AR
authors.lastname: Baghestani
authors.forename: Mohammad Reza
authors.initials: MR
authors.lastname: Zali
authors.forename: Mohamad Amin
authors.initials: MA
authors.lastname: Pourhoseingholi
mesh_terms: D001499:Bayes Theorem; D002423:Cause of Death; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D038801:International Classification of Diseases; D007492:Iran / Q000453:epidemiology; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D010190:Pancreatic Neoplasms / Q000145:classification* / Q000401:mortality*; D044469:Racial Groups; D012042:Registries; D015996:Survival Rate