Concordance of National Cancer Registration with self-reported breast, bowel and lung cancer in England and Wales: a prospective cohort study within the UK Collaborative Trial of Ovarian Cancer Screening

Background: It has been suggested that lower UK cancer survival may be due to incomplete case ascertainment by cancer registries. Methods: We assessed concordance between self-reported breast, bowel and lung cancer and cancer registration (CR) for 1995–2007 in England and Wales in the UK Collaborative Trial of Ovarian Cancer Screening. Results: Concordance of breast cancer CR was higher (94.7%:95% CI: 94.1–95.3%) than for bowel (85.1%:95% CI: 82.1–87.8%) and lung (85.4%:95% CI: 76.3–92.0%). CR concordance was lower in breast cancer (94.5% vs 98.8%) survivors compared with deceased but the difference was small. No difference was found for bowel (85.3% vs 94.6%) or lung (87.1% vs 90.5%) cancer. Conclusion: Concordance of CR and self-reported cancer is high. Incomplete registration is unlikely to be a major cause of lower UK survival rates.