News Release

LSUHSC paper judged best of the year

Grant and Award Announcement

Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center

New Orleans, LA – The Journal of Registry Management, the official journal of the National Cancer Registrars Association, has selected an LSU Health Sciences Center New Orleans paper as the Best Paper of the Year. The paper is entitled "Evaluating Factors Associated with Unknown SEER Summary Stage 2000 Derived from Collaborative Stage at Central Registry Level." The paper's lead author is Mei-Chin Hsieh, MSPH, CTR, of the Louisiana Tumor Registry, a program of the LSU Health Sciences Center New Orleans School of Public Health. LSUHSC co-authors include Qingzhao Yu, PhD, Xiao-Cheng Wu, MD, MPH and Ying Fan, PhD.

This is the second time that the Louisiana Tumor Registry at LSU Health Sciences Center New Orleans has received this honor from the National Cancer Registrars Association and its journal.

Since knowledge of cancer stage is crucial to treatment and prognosis, LSUHSC's Tumor Registry studied the variations in the percentages of unknown cancer stages reported by registries throughout the United States. The cancers analyzed were invasive colorectal, lung, female breast, and prostate cancers diagnosed between 2004 and 2007, based upon data obtained from 47 population-based cancer registries in the United States.

The study found that overall, lung cancer had the highest percentage of unknown stage (8.3%) and prostate cancer had the largest variation of unknown stage among registries (0.6%-18.1%). The study also found that, while factors associated with unknown stage differ by cancer site, the type of reporting source is an important predictor.

Variables associated with unknown stage included African-American ethnicity, smaller population, diagnosis year 2005, and non-hospital reporting source. The paper concluded that central registries with high percentages of unknown stage should be made aware of their data quality issues so they can investigate the contributing factors and provide training to registrars to improve their cancer data quality.

The award of recognition will be presented at the National Cancer Registrars Association's annual conference award luncheon in San Francisco, CA, June 2, 2013.

LSU Health Sciences Center New Orleans' Louisiana Tumor Registry is one of the 18 cancer registries in the United States designated as SEER registries by the National Cancer Institute.

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LSU Health Sciences Center New Orleans educates Louisiana's health care professionals. The state's academic health leader, LSUHSC New Orleans consists of a School of Medicine, the state's only School of Dentistry, Louisiana's only public School of Public Health, Schools of Allied Health Professions and Graduate Studies, and the only School of Nursing within an academic health center in the State of Louisiana. To learn more, visit http://www.lsuhsc.edu and http://www.twitter.com/LSUHSCHealth


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