Estimating the Completeness of Gastric Cancer Registration in Ardabil/Iran by a Capture-Recapture Method using Population-Based Cancer Registry Data

Background: Knowledge of cancer incidences is essential for cancer prevention and control programs.Capture-recapture methods have been recommended for reducing bias and increasing the accuracy of cancerincidence estimations. This study aimed to estimate the completeness of gastric cancer registration by the capturerecapturemethod based on Ardabil population-based cancer registry data. Materials and
Methods: All newcases of gastric cancer reported by three sources, pathology reports, death certificates and medical records thatreported to Ardabil population-based cancer registry in 2006 and 2008 were enrolled in the study. The duplicatecases based on the similarity of first name, surname and fathers names were identified between sources. Theestimated number of gastric cancers was calculated by the log-linear method using Stata 12 software.
Results:A total of 857 new cases of gastric cancer were reported from three sources. After removing duplicates, thereported incidence rates for the years 2006 and 2008 were 35.3 and 32.5 per 100,000 population, respectively.The estimated completeness calculated by log-linear method for these years was 36.7 and 36.0, respectively.
Conclusions: These results indicate that none of the sources of pathology reports, death certificates and medicalrecords individually or collectively fully cover the incident cases of gastric cancer. We can obtain more accurateestimates of incidence rates using the capture-recapture method.