ABSTRACT
Information regarding prostate cancer incidence and mortality often comes from different sources. Accurate incident rates require an organized tumor registry system in which all new diagnoses of cancers are recorded. In the US, information concerning newly diagnosed cancers is collected by the National Cancer Institute’s Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) program.2 The SEER program was created following passage of the National Cancer Act in 1971 and is mandated to collect, analyze, and disseminate information that is useful in preventing, diagnosing, and treating cancer. The geographic area comprising the SEER program’s database includes approximately 15% of the US population and consists of 11 populationbased tumor registries located throughout the country. Similar tumor registries exist in other western countries. Some countries record 100% of cancer diagnoses, while others use an organized system to sample a representative portion of the population. A few tumor registries were organized before World War II; most have been organized more recently.
