National Epidemiologic Survey of Thyroid cancer, Republic of Korea

Oh, Chang-Mo; Kong, Hyun-Joo; Kim, Eun-Yang; Kim, Hye-Jin; Jung, Kyu-Won; Park, Sohee; Won, Young-Joo

doi:2018.0.0.e2018052

Data profile

Epidemiology and Health 2018;e2018052.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.4178/epih.e2018052 [Accepted] Published online October 26, 2018.

National Epidemiologic Survey of Thyroid cancer, Republic of Korea

Chang-Mo Oh^1,2

, Sohee Park^1,3

¹National Cancer Center, Goyang, Korea
²Kyung Hee University, Seoul, Korea
³Yonsei University Graduate School of Public Health, Seoul, Korea

Correspondence Young-Joo Won ,Tel: +82-31-920-2015, Fax: +82-31-920-2179, Email: astra67@ncc.re.kr

Received: June 27, 2018 Accepted after revision: October 26, 2018

Abstract

The Korea Central Cancer Registry (KCCR) conducted the National Epidemiologic Survey of Thyroid cancer (NEST) to investigate changes in the epidemiological and clinical characteristics of thyroid cancer patients between 1999 and 2008. The NEST was designed to collect representative samples of patients with thyroid cancer diagnosed in the years 1999, 2005, and 2008 using a proportionally stratified and systematic random sampling method. Among 42,891 subjects diagnosed with thyroid cancer, 5,796 subjects were included in the final study population. This survey collected information on diagnostic methods and date, pathway of diagnosis, past history and thyroid-related disease, TNM and collaborative stage, and treatments. The NEST dataset was also linked to the cause of death database from the Statistic Korea. The mean age of the study subjects was 46.9 years. The ratio of men to women was 1:5.5. According to the histologic type of cancer, the proportion of papillary thyroid carcinoma shows an increasing trend (p<0.01). On the other hand, the proportion of distant metastasis and mean tumor size of thyroid cancer showed decreasing trends with increasing year, respectively (p<0.01, p<0.01). The NEST dataset is freely available on request (available from: http://kccrsurvey.cancer.go.kr/index.do).

Keywords: Thyroid neoplasms; Incidence; Mortality; Epidemiology; Korea