Abstract

Abstract Background One critical aspect for improvement of health care delivery to the population is a continuous monitoring of results. In this context, an increasing number of clinical cancer registries has been implemented in Germany since 2013. Main aspects of these registries include quality control, assessment of clinical outcome, support of epidemiological registries and potential implementation into clinical follow up. The ADT (Cooperation of German Cancer Centres e.V.) aims to merge data from local cancer registries into one nation-wide registry. In this context, we were able to analyse for the first time data of > 100.000 patients with malignant diseases of the stomach and esophagus. Methods Data from all local cancer registries in Germany were requested in the context of the National German Cancer Conference 2018 hosted by the German Cancer Society (DKG). After preparation of data, analysis included demographic and treatment aspects, and esophageal/gastric/GOJ cancers were analysed separately. Results From 2000–2016, 101.559 patients with cancers of the esophagus and stomach have been reported, representing approximately one quarter of the expected cancer cases in this time frame in Germany. Data quality and completeness improved over time. Incidences of esophageal and GOJ cancers increased, whereas incidence of gastric cancer decreased. Median age differed between entities with highest respectively lowest age in gastric/esophageal cancer. Further, median age increased in all three tumor types in the study period. Treatment pattern changed over time with a distinct increase of the use of neoadjuvant therapy in all cancer types. Percentage of curative intended surgery increased over time, reaching roughly 60% in gastric cancer, about 50% in GOJ and esophageal adenocarcinoma, and slightly less then 25% in esophageal squamous cell carcinoma. Finally, analysis of tumor stage dependent treatment confirmed higher rates of curative intended surgical treatment in early tumor stages, and an increased use of neoadjuvant treatment or chemo/radiotherapy approaches in higher tumor stages. Conclusion Combined Clinical Cancer Registries provide the unique opportunity to assess clinical relevant data of a large population based cohort of patients for purposes such as quality control and outcome measurement. Further, subgroup analyses can provide valid information on clinically relevant questions such as outcome/quality of different treatments. Disclosure All authors have declared no conflicts of interest.

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