Cancer Registry is the institution which is responsible for the collection, storage, analysis and interpretation of data on persons with cancer.

Cancer Registration is a process of continuing, systematic collection of data on the occurrence, characteristics and outcome of reportable neoplasms with the purpose of helping to assess and control the impact of malignant disease in the community.  Broadly there are two types of cancer Registries-Population Based (PBCR) and Hospital Based (HBCR).

            The HBCR records all cases of cancer treated in a given hospital irrespective of the population from which the cases has come.  The main interest is clinical care in hospital setting.

              The primary concern of PBCR is cancer in the community.  The PBCR collects information on all new cancer in a defined population and provide information on cancer incidence, mortality and trends over time in the defined population/geographic area covered by the registry.

1.CollecThe Delhi Cancer Registry is a Population Based Cancer Registry  established in January 1986 with the aim of obtaining reliable morbidity and mortality data on cancer among the Delhi Urban residents.

    The Delhi PBCR covers an urban area of 891.09 square kilometers of Delhi Municipal Corporation, New Delhi Municipal Committee and Delhi Cantonment and 29 census towns with an estimated population of  1,30,88,133 (Males : 7186306, Females:5901827) as per 2001 census.

The sources of cancer data are more than 160 major Government hospital centers, 250 private hospitals and nursing homes and Department of Vital Statistics of New Delhi Municipal Committee and Delhi Municipal Corporation.

The Medical Social Service Officers (MSSO) of our registry visits all these hospitals and nursing homes and interviews the patients who are either undergoing cancer treatment or being investigated for cancer at radiotherapy department.  They also examine the case records maintained by various departments of these hospitals viz. Pathology, Hematology, Radiology etc.  All the information collected is cross-checked for completeness of the data. MSSO’s also personally visit the offices of New Delhi Municipal Committee and Municipal Corporation of Delhi and collect information about deaths where the death certificates states the cause of death as cancer or tumours.  These death records are then matched with the morbidity records.

The Scientists of the registry regularly taught the MSSO’s about the   interviewing techniques and abstraction of data on cancer patients from hospital in patients and out patient records, radiotherapy and pathology files, Medical record and death records. Data abstractors were also trained in Topographical and Morphological terminology and impart training on coding of cancer cases using the International Classification of Diseases for Oncology.