Changes in autopsy rates among cancer patients and their impact on cancer statistics from a public health point of view: a longitudinal study from 1980 to 2010 with data from Cancer Registry Zurich

Bieri, Uwe; Moch, Holger; Dehler, Silvia; Korol, Dimitri; Rohrmann, Sabine

doi:10.5167/uzh-111399

Citations

Citation copied

Bieri, U., Moch, H., Dehler, S., Korol, D., & Rohrmann, S. (2015). Changes in autopsy rates among cancer patients and their impact on cancer statistics from a public health point of view: a longitudinal study from 1980 to 2010 with data from Cancer Registry Zurich. Virchows Archiv, 466, 637–643. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00428-015-1734-7

Abstract

During the last decades, autopsy rates have dramatically decreased in many countries. The Cancer Registry Zurich, which exists since 1980, provides the opportunity to address to what extent the number of autopsies in cancer patients has changed over a longer period of time and how often autopsies provide a diagnosis of clinically undetected cancer. Data from the Cancer Registry Zurich consisting of 102,434 cancer cases among 89,933 deceased patients between 1980 and 2010 were analyzed by means of descriptive statistics. The autopsy ra