Table 1. Patient Demographic Data Items

Item	Description
[CANREG ID]	CanReg ID is a unique nine-digit number allocated automatically by the computer during data storage. First four digits represent year. If a patient has more than one tumour, each tumour is given the same CanReg ID by specifying it at the multiple primary section of the program. These primary tumours can be distinguished by primary site, morphology and incident date.
[FIRST NAME]	The patient’s first name at the time of registration. Fifteen digits maximum.
[SURNAME]	The patient’s surname or family name at the time of registration. Fifteen digits maximum.
[OTHER NAME]	Other name or surname of a female at birth. Initials, abbreviations and nicknames should only be used if the full name is not known. Fifteen digits maximum
[SEX]	Sex is the gender of the patient. If there is no clear evidence as to the patient’s sex in the hospital notes, sex should be recorded as unknown; (1) Male, (2) Female, (9) Unknown.
[AGE]	Age is the age at incident of cancer. Age is not a function of time of abstraction. Age is very vital in the analysis of incidence rates.
[DATE OF BIRTH]	The patient’s date of birth. It is a key item in cancer data analysis. It enables age at diagnosis to be established for epidemiological and survival analyses. The date of birth is also used to check the central database at the registry for duplications and for cross-referencing purposes. The date field is in a format of DDMMYYYY.
[ETHNICITY]	The ethnic category of the patient as specified by the patient.
[PLACE OF RESIDENCE]	The aim here is to record the patient’s usual address at the time of diagnosis with a registrable condition, not any subsequent condition. It is normally a city, town or a village. This field assists epidemiological studies by establishing linkages to an exposure, etc. Address is the usual residence of the patient. Address is essential to identifying residents and non-residents, thus defining an inclusion and exclusion criteria of a case for the registry.
[DISTRICT]	District is the administrative area of the registry population coverage where the place of residence of the patient is located. Districts normally have official census data which is very useful for distributions and measurements of rates.
[OCCUPATION]	The patient’s usual occupation. Details of a patient’s occupation are recorded for use in epidemiological studies of the influence of social and environmental factors on cancer incidence and survival. The patient’s main lifetime occupation is the one most likely to affect the probability of developing or surviving cancer. Good reliable data on main lifetime occupation can be very difficult to collect as patients may have retired or recently changed occupation because of declining health, etc.