gms | German Medical Science

In some countries of the Federal Republic of Germany you can find clinical cancer registries, which document data of cancer patients of a defined region from the diagnosis to the oncological therapy till the follow-up care or till death. These registries are excellent instruments to evaluate the quality of oncological care. The scientific medical societies developed a science- based guideline with high evidence, called “S3 – guideline for diagnosis, therapy and follow-up care of female breast cancer”. This guideline recommends strategies for diagnosis, therapy and follow-up care. The evaluation of these recommended strategies by defined quality indicators is possible based on data of clinical cancer registries. In this paper results of oncological care of breast cancer patients are compared for different federal countries following quality indicators defined in the guideline for different areas of the oncological treatment. The first area considered is the early recognition of female breast cancer. An indicator for an effective working system of early recognition of breast cancer is the rate of DCIS und LCIS carcinomata. The rate of DCIS(ductal carcinoma in situ) und LCIS (lobular carcinoma in situ) carcinomata will increase, if the mammography screening will be established in Germany. Using the data of clinical cancer registries the evaluation of the screening program is possible. Here we compare the results of early diagnosis in several federal countries of Germany, documented by clinical cancer registries. One of the most important quality indicators of the surgical therapy of female breast cancer is the rate of breast-conserving therapy. The paper shows the results of data analysis of several clinical cancer registries in selected German areas. The quality target is 60% breast- conserving therapies in stadium T1/ T2. By data of clinical cancer registries it can be demonstrated, that this rate is increasing in the last few years. Another quality indicator is the realisation of an adjuvant therapy, chemotherapy or hormonotherapy, in a rate of 90% of invasive tumours. The realisation of this quality target is evaluated using the data of clinical cancer registries. The paper demonstrates that clinical cancer registries are powerful means for the quality control of oncological care according to the recommendations of the science-based guidelines. This is again supporting the request to establish clinical cancer registries in all areas of Germany.