Bias in an African cancer registry

✍ Scribed by A. C. Templeton; Alexis Bianchi

• Book ID: 102864668
• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1972
• Tongue: French
• Weight: 504 KB
• Volume: 10
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0020-7136
• DOI: 10.1002/ijc.2910100124

✦ Synopsis

Abstract

The returns of the Kampala Cancer Registry, Uganda, which registers cases diagnosed in the whole of the country, have been analysed to discover if changes in patterns of registration have occurred over a 20‐year period. The age distribution has remained surprisingly constant. Comparison with the best data available in the country, from a relatively small area adjacent to the main teaching hospital, suggests that in the first years of study deeply placed tumours were only half as likely to be diagnosed as more superficially placed lesions. Registration of cancer in females was about half as efficient as in males. Registration bias has diminished as social patterns have evolved and as hospitals have become more accessible but it still considerable. Similar changes occurred in all regions in Uganda which vary markedly in social, ethnic and climatic backgrounds and it is highly likely, therefore, that a similar bias is operating in cancer studies elsewhere in Africa.