Concordance on the recording of cancer in the Saskatchewan Cancer Agency Registry, hospital charts and death registrations.

Accurate and complete registries are an important source of knowledge about cancer. The concordance of the recording of neoplasms in the Saskatchewan cancer registry with that in hospital charts and death registrations was evaluated for 368 patients. The agreement between registry and hospital charts or death registrations was excellent (kappa: 0.93; 95% confidence interval: 0.89, 0.97), with 91.3% of those with cancer having the same neoplasm recorded in their chart or death registration as in the registry. There was only one patient whose hospital chart indicated cancer who was not in the registry and one apparent major discrepancy relating to the cancer site, which was due to the recording of the primary site in the registry and a secondary in the hospital chart. Although based on a relatively small number of patients, these results suggest a high degree of consistency between cancer registry, hospital charts and death registrations in Saskatchewan.