Notes

Data quality statement

AIHW Australian Cancer Database

All forms of cancer, except basal and squamous cell carcinomas of the skin, are notifiable diseases in each Australian state and territory. This means there is legislation in each jurisdiction that requires hospitals, pathology laboratories and other various institutions to report all cases of cancer to their central cancer registry. An agreed subset of the data collected by these cancer registries is supplied annually to the AIHW, where it is compiled into the ACD. The ACD currently contains data on all cases of cancer diagnosed from 1982 to 2013 for all states and territories and for 2014 cases for all jurisdictions except NSW.

Cancer reporting and registration is a dynamic process and records in the state and territory cancer registries may be modified if new information is received. As a result, the number of cancer cases reported by the AIHW for any particular year may change slightly over time and may not always align with state and territory reporting for that same year.

The Data Quality Statement for the ACD 2014.

AIHW National Mortality Database

Cause of Death Unit Record File data are provided to the AIHW by the Registries of Births, Deaths and Marriages and the National Coronial Information System (managed by the Victorian Department of Justice) and include cause of death coded by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS). The data are maintained by the AIHW in the National Mortality Database (NMD).

In the NMD, both the year in which the death occurred and the year in which it was registered are provided. For the purposes of this report, actual mortality data are shown based on the year the death occurred, except for the most recent year (namely 2015) where the number of people whose death was registered is used. A small proportion of deaths occur in a given calendar year which are not registered until subsequent years. Approximately 4% to 7% of deaths which occurred from 1997 onwards were registered in subsequent years and as such will have a year of occurrence that is different to the year of registration [1].

In this report, deaths registered in 2013 and earlier are based on the final version of cause of death data; deaths registered in 2014 and 2015 are based on revised and preliminary versions, respectively and are subject to further revision by the ABS.

The data quality statements underpinning the AIHW NMD can be found on the following ABS internet pages:

For more information on the AIHW NMD see Deaths data.

BreastScreen Australia

National Bowel Cancer Screening Program (NBCSP)

References

  1. ABS 2017. Causes of Death, Australia, 2015. ABS cat. no. 3303.0. Canberra, Australia.