Quality control of automatically defined cancer cases by the automated registration system of the Venetian Tumour Registry

Background: In the Venetian Tumour Registry a substantial quota of cases (55%) is accepted using an algorithm that automatically evaluates diagnostic evidence: this study aims at assessing the reliability of the information produced in this way. Methods: A reabstraction study was conducted, which put a stratified sample of 1539 automatically accepted cases through a double-blind manual revision. Results: A significantly higher proportion of prevalent cases were found among breast, prostate and larynx cancer cases without microscopic confirmation, while there is a clear strong inverse relationship between the number of concordant diagnostic sources and the proportions of discordant diagnoses: cases based only on a single cytology record are particularly unreliable. A small number of multiple cancers are not detected because of one of the rules applied. Conclusion: The overall proportion of incorrect decisions is not high and similar to those reported by other registries, but errors are correlated to the diagnostic evidence pattern. As a further check, we decided to revise clinical cases for the three sites mentioned manually, in order to reduce the numbers proportion of both prevalent cases, and all cytology-based diagnoses, so as to reduce the number of ‘false positives’. Coverage of hospital discharge source has been extended in order to decrease the proportion of cases based only on pathology records.