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29
Cancer Registration.—Consideration has been given at various
times to the question of making malignant diseases notifiable for.
in present circumstances, the only information available to a
Medical Officer of Health is that obtained from the Death Returns.
He therefore gains no knowledge of the incidence of deaths, effective
treatment, recovery rates or possible pre-disposing factors.
In recent years, however, the World Health Organisation has
emphasised the value of a system of cancer registration and
" follow up " and its reasons given for such a scheme are fourfold.
viz.:—
(a) for improving the possibility that patients developing
cancer shall in future receive the earliest and best treatment
available ;
(b) for increasing knowledge of cancer morbidity and its
relationship with social and environmental factors ;
(c) for providing indications for scientific studies on particular
points of the aetiology of cancer ;
(d) for ascertaining the prospects of survival and apparent
recovery with a view to measuring in the future the value
of steps taken to secure earlier and better treatment.
In this connection. Great Britain makes available to this
Organisation a progressively increasing volume of information on
the incidence and epidemiology of cancer, mainly by reason of its
cancer registration scheme now widely established in this country.
On the implementation of the National Health Act, arrangements
for cancer registration, begun in 1930 by the Radium Commission,
became the responsibility of the fifteen Regional Hospital
Boards and although such arrangements for registration were not
of a compulsory nature, some fourteen of the Regions had in fact
some sort of registration scheme in operation by the end of 1959,
albeit some of these schemes do not cover the whole of their respective
regions. Since 1947 statistical control and analysis has been
undertaken by the General Register Office.
For historical reasons cancer registration has always been
more complete for cases receiving radiotherapy than for others but
bias in this direction is gradually being eliminated and total
registrations, which have increased from 27,865 for 1945 to 82,318
in 1956, are expected to exceed 90,000 when figures for 1958
become available. This latter figure is estimated to be approximately
three quarters of the national incidence of cancer, an augury
which gives great hopes of covering the remaining quarter during
the next decade.