Facilities are required by federal and Florida state statute to collect and report cases of cancer and, as of January 1, 2004, cases of benign central nervous system (CNS) tumors.
These cases are reported for the year in which they are first seen at the facility. In 2007, there were a total of 752 new cases of cancer and benign CNS tumors. Of these, 72% were analytic (newly diagnosed) and 28% were non-analytic (diagnosed and completed first-course therapy elsewhere).
Understanding the demographic distributions of our cancer patient populations is important for planning effective cancer services. The MMH demographics help demonstrate whether MMH is reaching our whole community or whether there are specific populations that may need additional services. In 2007, there were slightly more female cancer patients (53%) than male patients (47%). This represents a change over 2006 when the male and female cancer populations were almost exactly equal. The racial distribution was 90% white, 9% black and 1% other races.
Of the analytic cancer patient population, 59% were age 65 years or older. The age of analytic patients is important because the age at diagnosis of this population is equivalent to the age they first came to MMH. While age at diagnosis is more relevant to physicians, age at presentation helps hospital administrators to more effectively plan cancer treatment and support services.
Determining the stage or extent of cancer is critical to making effective treatment decisions. The staging system used for this report is the Collaborative Staging System (CSS) developed by the American Joint Committee on Cancer (AJCC), the Commission on Cancer (CoC), and the Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results (SEER) program of the National Cancer Institute with collaboration from multiple national and state cancer organizations. The CSS staging system uses an algorithm to derive from staging factors collected by cancer registries a stage that may combine clinical and pathologic tumor (T), lymph node (N) and metastatic (M) components. The overall CSS stage distribution of MMH analytic cancer cases is as follows:
- Stage 0 – 10%
- Stage 1 – 20%
- Stage 2 – 16%
- Stage 3 – 13%
- Stage 4 – 17%
- Stage Unknown – 14%
- Stage Not Applicable – 11%
Stage distributions for specific primary sites can be found on the MMH site distribution table:
The five most frequent analytic cancers at MMH in 2007 were breast (25% of total analytic cases), lung (21%), colorectal (13%), Non-Hodgkin lymphoma (4%) and bladder (4%). Per
Cancer Facts & Figures 2007, published by the American Cancer Society, the five most common cancers in the United States were prostate, lung, breast, colorectal and bladder in that order. Per the same source, the most common cancers in Florida were lung, prostate, breast, colorectal and bladder. A chart comparing the frequency of the five most common cancer sites seen at MMH in 2007 to national and Florida incidence of those same cancers follows:
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