Comparison of hospital based cancer registry of Iran and the United States of America

Introduction: Cancer research is one of the essential activities for its control and treatment. Hospital based cancer registry system is an information system designed to collect, organize and analyze data on cancer. The objective of the present study was to compare hospital based cancer registry system in Iran with that in the USA. Methods: This research was a comparative study. Studied population included all the health care centers of Tehran, Shaheed Beheshti and Iran medical sciences universities having a pathology laboratory. Results: The findings indicate that “Pars” software program is mainly used in pathology, while “ADS-9” program in medical record departments of the hospitals .Furthermore, requested information about cancer cases was mostly by researchers and students and the least by the hospital heads, cancer committees and physicians councils. 4-8% of cancer information from the pathology departments was demanded by hospital managers, pathology committees, physicians, researchers and students. 60% of cancer information from “medical record departments” was reported to the drug and care deputy of the medical sciences universities to which the hospitals were affiliated. 56% of cancer information from the pathology departments was reported to the health centers outside the hospitals. Conclusion: The hospital based cancer registry system in Iran is imperfect and limited in scope as compared to the registry system in the U.S. The cancer registry in Iran only records demographic information of patients and the type of tumors. Learning from the hospital based cancer registry of the U.S.A can help to improve the hospital cancer registry based system in Iran