Cancer registry useful for Florida breast cancer early detection program.

2003 DEC 4 - (NewsRx.com & NewsRx.net) -- Investigators report results from a Florida breast cancer early detection program using the statewide cancer registry.

According to recent research published in the journal Breast Cancer Research and Treatment, "In Florida, a Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)-funded initiative of the Florida Department of Health has targeted socio-economically disadvantaged women for breast and cervical cancer screening. Since 1995, over 12,000 women aged 50-64, within 200% of the federally defined poverty level, with no health insurance, and living in metropolitan catchment areas in Florida, have been screened by the Florida Breast and Cervical Cancer Early Detection Program (BCCEDP)."

"This was a matched cohort cross-sectional analysis of a cohort study of Florida women with breast cancer using the Florida incident cancer registry, the Florida Cancer Data System (FCDS)," said Robert Tamer and collaborators at the University of Miami, Florida Department of Health, Cincinnati Children's Hospital, and University of Florida. "The study evaluated the hypothesis that there would be no difference in the stage at diagnosis between breast cancer cases in the BCCEDP-screening program and breast cancer cases not diagnosed in the screening program."

"After linking the BCCEDP records with the FCDS, BCCEDP-screened cases were matched on gender, age, race, ethnicity, and other variables with five groups of FCDS breast cancer cases not screened by BCCEDP to control for demographic and socio-economic factors," reported Tamer and his colleagues. "Breast cancer cases diagnosed in BCCEDP were ...