Evaluation of data completeness of the prostate cancer registry after robotic radical prostatectomy

<p><b>INTRODUCTION</b>This study evaluated the data completeness in the registration of prostate cancer after robotic radical prostatectomy (RRP) in the Urological Cancer Registry at the Singapore General Hospital (SGH), and its compliance to the international standards of US Commission on Cancer (CoC).</p><p><b>MATERIALS AND METHODS</b>A certified cancer registrar reviewed all RRP cases between June 2003 and July 2008 in the Urological Cancer Registry at SGH.</p><p><b>RESULTS</b>A total of 365 cases were reviewed. The results showed that 351 (96.2%) of RRP patients' demographic data were captured and 321 (87.9%) of RRP patients were staged. According to the international standards of CoC for an academic institution, the requirement is to capture 100% of all cancer cases and stage at least 90% of them. As for data completeness, 317 (86.7%) of RRP details were captured as compared to the CoC standard requirement of 90%.</p><p><b>CONCLUSIONS</b>The existing manual cancer registry does not fully meet the CoC standards. Hence, the registry increased sources of case-finding and used active case-finding. With improvements made to the data collection methodology, the number of prostate cancer cases identified has been increased by 52.1% from 215 in 2007 to 327 in 2009. The registry is expected to be fully compliant with the CoC standard with the recruitment of more full time cancer registrars when a new web-based cancer registry is in full operation.</p>

Local experience of endorectal magnetic resonance imaging of prostate with correlation to radical prostatectomy specimens

<p><b>INTRODUCTION</b>We evaluated the accuracy of endorectal magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) in the staging of prostate cancer.</p><p><b>MATERIALS AND METHODS</b>We retrospectively reviewed 32 patients who underwent endorectal MR prostate prior to radical prostatectomy. The tumour stage based on MR imaging was compared with the pathologic stage. The sensitivity and specificity of endorectal MR prostate in the evaluation of extracapsular extension (ECE) of the tumour were then determined.</p><p><b>RESULTS</b>MR correctly diagnosed 17 cases of organ-confined prostate carcinoma and 2 cases of locally advanced disease. In the evaluation of ECE, endorectal MR achieved a high specificity of 94.4%, low sensitivity of 14.3% and moderate accuracy of 59.4%.</p><p><b>CONCLUSION</b>Endorectal MR prostate has high specificity for the detection of ECE. It is useful in the local staging of prostate cancer in patients with intermediate risk as this helps to ensure that few patients will be deprived of potentially curative surgery.</p>