Introduction: An institutional and centralized hospital-based tumour registry (TR) is the ideal supporting tool for the organization and management of clinical data in a comprehensive cancer center. The purpose of this paper is to describe the development of the TR at the European Institute of Oncology (IEO) in Milan, Italy, from its origin to its current applications.

Material and methods: After a series of meetings with members of administrative, clinical, research and informatics departments, the TR was activated in March 2006 with the aim to collect data on all the individuals referring to the Institute, with or at risk of developing a tumour. It was implemented on an Oracle-based interface. A minimum data set of variables was defined and data collection was divided into four forms, which together gather all the relevant data on patients, tumors, treatments and subsequent events.

Results: After a 6-month pilot period, which involved the training of the tumour registrars, adjustments to the structure of the registry, development of data quality control procedure and finalization of the operative protocol, from September 2006 the data collection has been fully operative. Five registrars have been chronologically entering data of all individuals who visited the IEO for the first time since 1st January 2000. As of March 2009, data on 69,637 individuals and 43,567 tumours has been reviewed, recoded and registered in the TR. Twenty-two percent of the tumors (n=9,578) were first invasive primaries, diagnosed and treated at the IEO; the most common sites were breast (n=4,972), lung (n=627), intestines (n=479) and prostate (n=376).
Conclusion: The IEO TR has proven functional and reliable in monitoring the activity of the Hospital, allowing extraction of data from any subpopulation with characteristics of interest. The structured and centralized TR represents an important tool for our research-oriented Institution.

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