Description of Treatment of Uterus Cancer Based on the Japanese DPC Database

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Cancer has been the leading cause of death in Japan since 1981 and the number of can-cer deaths in 2010 in Japan was about 354,000. In 2002, The Japanese government has introduced the casemix based evaluation system. This made it possible to use the casemix database for the evaluation of clinical process of cancer treatment. We tried to describe the treatment process of uterus cancer among the Japanese acute care hospitals. MATERIAL AND METHOD: We have extracted 36,490 uterus cancer cases from the DPC database (1st July 1 2010 to 31st October 2010). Using this dataset, we have described the cases according to age category, cancer stage and contents of treatment. RESULTS: Among all cases, cervical cancer cases were 14,498, corpus cancer cases were 15,322 and other types (including unknown) were 6,670. Both corpus and cervical cancer, stage 1 is the most frequent for primary cases. For recurrent cases of corpus cancer, stage 3 was the most frequent (34%) and for cervical cancer, stage 2 was the most frequent (29%). In both case of corpus and cervical cancer, the most frequent regimen was " carboplatin + paclitaxel " . CONCLUSION: By using DPC data, it is possible to describe the treatment process of uterus cancer among the Japanese acute care hospitals. If it become to be possible to combine DPC database with other large scale clinical data, it will be an important information resource to complement such clinical database. Cancer has been the leading cause of death in Japan since 1981. The number of cancer deaths in 2010 in Japan was about 354,000. In terms of cancer sites, lung was the leading site (23.8%) for males, fol-lowed by stomach (15.6%), liver (10.2%), colon (7.1% ; same rank when colon and rectum are com-bined : 11.4%), and pancreas (6.9%). The leading site for females was lung (13.7%), followed by stomach (12.1%), colon (10.6% ; same rank when colon and rectum are combined : 14.4%), pancreas (9.5%), and breast (8.8%) 1) . Considering the importance of dealing with can-cer for the population's health, the Japanese govern-m e n t h a s b e e n i m p l e m e n t e d t h e 3 r d -t e r m Comprehensive 10-year Strategy for Cancer Control since 2004. The main purpose is to largely reduce the morbidity and mortality of cancer by promoting com-prehensive health care, prevention and research. In June 2006, the Cancer Control Act was