Degree of coverage and data quality

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Degree of coverage and completeness

All patients with adenocarcinoma of the pancreas (ICD-10 C25) in Norway should be included in the registry. Patients with the diagnoses neuroenocrine tumour, sarcoma or pancreatic lymphoma are excluded from the registry.

The Cancer Registry's basic registry contains information on 92 percent of all pancreatic cancer patients.

Degree of coverage refers to the proportion of patients registered in the Cancer Registry of Norway in 2023 who have a clinical report. For example, the coverage rate for clinical assessment reports is calculated as the proportion of all cases diagnosed in 2023 where an assessment report has been received and registered. The coverage rate for the report for 2023 is close to 73.1 percent.

Read more about coverage and data quality in the Annual Report 2023 Pancreatic Cancer (Norwegain only)

Data quality

Quality assurance of data is done as an integral part of the coding and registration process. In addition, the following examples help to ensure data quality in the Cancer Registry:

  • Several independent sources report information
  • The information is reported at several points in the course of the disease
  • The completeness of the quality register is calculated and assessed through annual coverage rate analyses
  • The employees have unique expertise in coding cancer cases according to the Cancer Registry's own code book and international coding systems
  • IT systems have rules and barriers for illogical combinations, incorrect information and more
  • The Cancer Registry of Norway conducts analyses and control runs that reveal inconsistency in the data
  • Data extraction for researchers makes it possible to check a smaller data set of information that can reveal individual errors (e.g. incorrect entry of hospital codes) or systematic differences due to different interpretations of coding systems and rules
  • The quality register annually performs a validity analysis where information on radiation therapy and drug cancer treatment registered in the Cancer Registry is compared with information on radiation therapy and drug cancer treatment registered in the Norwegian Patient Register