Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (2022) Cancer data in Australia, AIHW, Australian Government, accessed 31 March 2023.
Australian Institute of Health and Welfare. (2022). Cancer data in Australia. Retrieved from https://www.aihw.gov.au/reports/cancer/cancer-data-in-australia
Cancer data in Australia. Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, 04 October 2022, https://www.aihw.gov.au/reports/cancer/cancer-data-in-australia
Australian Institute of Health and Welfare. Cancer data in Australia [Internet]. Canberra: Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, 2022 [cited 2023 Mar. 31]. Available from: https://www.aihw.gov.au/reports/cancer/cancer-data-in-australia
Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) 2022, Cancer data in Australia, viewed 31 March 2023, https://www.aihw.gov.au/reports/cancer/cancer-data-in-australia
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The list of cancers available within CdiA are provided in the table below. On occasion, some cancers may not be available for some reports, for example, histology information is not available within the National Mortality Database and accordingly the cancer groups that are derived from histology data are not available in the mortality by age data visualisation.
Please note there are no deaths reported for C94.1 within the NMD. For simplicity, when ICD-10 coding for myeloproliferative neoplasms (excluding CML), leukaemia and all blood cancers combined is mentioned elsewhere in the report, the ACD ICD-10 coding alone may be cited.
Histology 8800-8936, 8990-8992, 9040-9045, 9120-9262, 9540-9582 for all topography codes except C40–C41
Histology 8936, 9140 for all topography codes
Note: Please refer to Cancer data commentary no. 7 'Updating sarcoma reporting' for more information on the coding of all sarcomas combined and bone cancer from the Australian Cancer Database.
Cancer groupings have been based on the third edition of the International Classification of Diseases of Oncology (ICD-O-3) classifications.
Where possible, specified cancers have been provided as well as the larger groupings in which they are included – for example, acute myeloid leukaemia and acute lymphoblastic leukaemia have separate filter options in the summary visualisations, as well as their higher grouping leukaemia.
Note that in the rankings visualisation, higher level groupings such as leukaemia and head and neck cancers are generally excluded; instead, individual cancers such as acute myeloid leukaemia, are included in rankings.
Registration of all cancers, excluding basal and squamous cell carcinomas of the skin, is required by law in each state and territory. Information on newly diagnosed cancers are collected by each state and territory cancer registry and provided to the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare annually to produce the Australian Cancer Database. Since basal and squamous cell carcinomas of the skin are not notifiable, data on these cancers are not included in statistics from the ACD.
Five-year relative survival is the percentage of people diagnosed with a cancer who survived for at least 5 years after diagnosis, relative to people of the same age and sex in the population. Where the survival rate of the population diagnosed with a cancer is greater than the general population and there are little to no deaths in the diagnosed population, the relative survival rate may be greater than 100%. The 5-year relative survival is used as an example, the same principles apply to all relative survival data.
Suppression rules have been applied to the data. Rates for state and territory incidence and mortality are not calculated where the count of cancers is less than 5. Suppression occurs because population rate trends and comparisons derived from low counts may have a greater likelihood of being misinterpreted. While rates based on low counts are not provided for state and territory incidence and mortality, counts of the data are available in the relevant 'Cancer data in Australia source' worksheet.
Survival rates are also suppressed for smaller populations. Count data is not provided for survival, only the rates. Accordingly, suppressed survival rates may appear as missing data.
Time series are only presented for a cancer where the data is considered complete. Data from the Australian Cancer Database (ACD) is reportable from 1982 onwards and the National Mortality Database (NMD) data is reported from 1971 onwards. Unless otherwise indicated, all cancer groups reported within Cancer data in Australia will have complete data reportable from these years onwards. The following table specifies the year from which data were considered sufficiently complete to be reported from the ACD and NMD.
Cancer group/site
The years stated above also apply to risk of diagnosis and risk of death estimates. Time series for survival and prevalence data are also shortened where the coverage years required to derive these estimates extends beyond the reportable start year. For example: survival estimates for all blood cancers combined are derived from the ACD and are only reported for the 2009–2013 and 2014–2018 periods. Similarly, only 1-year and 5-year prevalence are reported when considering the 31 December 2017 census date.
Neuroendocrine tumours, all sarcomas combined and soft tissue sarcoma data is available for incidence and survival and now also mortality from the ACD. The method to derive mortality for these cancer groups from the ACD will be refined in the future and may change to some degree in future CdiA reports.
The Australian Capital Territory and Northern Territory incidence counts for each cancer are equal to the average of the most recent 5 years of data. The presentation of rolling averages are used to reduce volatility associated with cancer rates in these smaller populations. The method is used within this report for methodological consistency with data produced by the respective data custodians.
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This report predominantly uses data from the Australian Cancer Database (ACD) and the National Mortality Database (NMD). Please visit the Notes section for more information.
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