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Macerata Province - Cancer Registry

Registration area

The Macerata Province Cancer Registry covers the population of the whole province (57 municipalities) ranging from a mountainous zone in the west to the Adriatic Sea on the east, within the Marches Region, in central Italy.

In 1999 population density was 109.1 per Km². Some 32% of municipalities are located in the mountainous areas and have a low population density and a high proportion of people engaged in services. The 5% of municipalities situated in the coastal areas bordering the Adriatic Sea have a high number of people engaged in the industrial sector, with few in agriculture. The 63% remaining are located in the hill zone and can be characterized as intermediate between the other two zone.

Cancer care facilities

General health care in the province is provided predominantly by three Local Health Districts (LHUs) through the district oncology services, a network of general hospitals and two pathology laboratories. This is supplemented by regional oncology hospitals with cancer surgery and chemotherapy services and radiotherapy facilities located ouside Macerata Province, in Ancona, the capital of the Marches Region (40-90 Km distant). Most patients suspected of having cancer in the primary care facilities in the registry area are referred to regional hospitals and oncology services, to one of the hospitals with comprehensive cancer services in central Italy within a 300 km radius, or occasionally to one of the cancer centres in northern Italy (over 450 km distant).

Registry structure and methods

The Registry is located, together with the Mortality Registry of Macerata Province, the Childhood Cancer Registry of Marches Region and the Malignant Mesothelioma Registry of Marches Region, within the Hygiene, Health and Environmental Sciences Department of Camerino University. The registries are administered and partly funded by Camerino University and the Macerata Province Section of the Anti-Cancer League, and partly by the Regional Health Agency. The registries are staffed by a full-time epidemiologist, a registrar and three doctors, and a medical oncologist and a pathologist act as consultants.

Information on cancer cases is based on active data collection by registry personnel. List of cancer in- and outpatients are provided through the regional admission discharge records and new cancer cases are identified from clinical, histological and cytological records of public and private hospitals in the Marches Region. Other case collection sources include the list of patients exempted from payment, the dead certificates from the Mortality Registry of Macerata Province, information from general practitioners and other Italian registries. The registry receives copies of all death certificates every three mounths from LHUs, and a list of all death certificates at the end of each year from each municipalities.

The information concerning each tumour, including personal identification and full clinical details, is coded and entered in a computer database by the same operator.

Interpreting the results

It has been possible to have lists of admission and discharge records for all cancer patients hospitalized in Macerata province since 1996. The death cause registration system has improved a great deal lately and this information source has improved registry data, particulary for elderly subjects.

Use of the data

The registry prepares a regular report on cancer incidence and mortality rates and time trends for LHUs and, occasionally, for Regional Health Administration. Some recent studies of survival on the main registered cancer cases in the Province, together with analysis of cancer mortality in the region during the last twenty years, have been carried out. Specific and collaborative projects with other cancer registries in various fields of cancer epidemiology are in progress.