incidence of lung cancer in the Gulf cooperation council countries

Lung cancer is the most common cancer in the world, with an estimated number of 1.3 million new cases as of 2002. This is the first report from the countries that comprise the Gulf Cooperation Council [GCC]. All the primary lung cancer cases registered in the Gulf Center for Cancer Registration during 1998 to 2001 were used to calculate the age-standardized incidence rate [ASR] per 100 000 person-years by the direct standardization method. Overall, there were 1607 [1261 males, 346 females] primary lung cancer cases registered during this period with the male to female ratio of 3.6:1. The highest ASR was in Bahrain [34.3 for males, 12.1 for females] followed by Qatar [18.5 for males, 5.5 for females] and Kuwait [13.8 for males, 4.0 for females]; the lowest rate was in Saudi Arabia [4.8 for males, 1.3 for females]. The mean age at diagnosis for males ranged from 68.7 years in Bahrain to 59.2 years in Oman. For females it ranged from 68.2 years in Bahrain to 58.0 years in Oman. Squamous cell carcinoma in males [except in Qatar] and adenocarcinoma in females were the predominant histological type. Cancer of the lung is one of the common cancers among males in all the GCC countries and ranks second among Bahraini females. Adenocarcinomas were more common in women than men

audit of the quality of data in the National Cancer Registry, King Khaled University Hospital, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, 2000.: a statistical approach

The completeness of case ascertainment was assessed through the utilization of multiple data sources including medical records, pathology reports and death certificates by employing a capture- recapture method and building up several log linear models. The validity of data by re-abstracting random sample [10%] of records to assess the minor and major disagreement of certain items and timeliness of data through calculation of reporting delay time [RDT] was investigated. A total of 991 cancer cases was reported in the registry during the study period, 71.4% of them had medical records, 77.5% had pathology reports and 28.1% had death certificates. A total of 571 missed cases was identified from the overlapping sources of reporting and fitting log linear models which assured the dependency of the reporting methods. The adjusted rate of ascertainment was 63.4%. The stage of cancer showed the highest major disagreement [43.6%], followed by the histology and primary site [25.6% and 10.3%, respectively] and the date of diagnosis [23.1%]. On the other hand, 250 cases showed RDT less than 6 months