RESUMO
The main purpose was to establish a cancer registry which could provide data for the treatment and control of cancer in the Faroe Islands. The registry should also be useful for epidemiological research in the future to pinpoint causes of cancer. The initiation of the registry is a result of a workgroup with members from the Faroes Hospital and Health System and from the Institute of Cancer Epidemiology at the Danish Cancer Society. The data items collected in the Faroes registry are identical with the data items in the Danish Cancer Registry. To provide a basis for the registry we have performed a retrospective data collection identifying all cancer cases in the Faroes for the 15 year period 1979-1993. All hospital records and death certificates in the period were scrutinized. The official initiation of the Faroes cancer registry was on 1, January 1994.
Assuntos
Neoplasias/epidemiologia , Dinamarca/epidemiologia , Humanos , Sistema de Registros , Estudos RetrospectivosRESUMO
On the Faroe Islands (45,000 inhabitants), a total of 203 cases of meningococcal disease (MD) were recorded during the period 1978-1985. The peak incidence was 95/100,000 in 1981. MD mainly attacked children, 30% were below two years and 75% were below 11 years of age. The lethality rate was 5.4% (11 deaths). In 1981, rifampicin was introduced as a prophylactic treatment against secondary cases and at the same time, a decrease in incidence occurred. The decrease was more pronounced in the part of the country where the number of prescribed prophylactic doses per case of MD was greatest. These observations indicate that the introduction of rifampicin may have modified the course of the epidemic. None of the MD-patients had received prophylactic treatment with rifampicin. Of 132 examined, one patient with complement deficiency was identified, indicating that complement deficiencies were not a major risk factor in the epidemic of MD on the Faroe Islands.
