Accessing NCI's SEER cancer data base with SeerQuery and CD-ROM.

The National Cancer Institute operates the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) cancer data base. SEER data are obtained from participating population-based registries that monitor cancer incidence and patient survival in a representative 10 percent sample of the general population. The data cover all cancers (except superficial skin cancers) in the defined regional populations. SeerQuery is a personal computer program for accessing that data on IBM-compatible personal computer compact diskettes in read-only memory (CD-ROM) form. SeerQuery facilitates rapid access to cancer data at minimal cost and effort to the user. SeerQuery is menu-driven, enabling physicians and other health care professionals to query the data base directly. They can use the data to determine cancer frequency, perform cross-tabulation, determine incidence, and calculate survival using such variables as primary cancer site, histologic type, stage, sex, age, and race. The comprehensive data base lacks many selection biases that are inherent in data reported from other sources. SeerQuery has applications in professional education and in cancer control program planning and resource allocation.