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Introduction to the Tennessee Cancer Registry for Cancer Care Abstractors

Standards for Reporting

Guidelines for reporting cancer to the Tennessee Cancer Registry (TCR) are established by the North American Association of Central Cancer Registries (NAACCR). These guidelines are published in the Data Standards and Data Dictionary (Standards for Cancer Registries, Volume II). This document presents standards for which cases are to be included in the registry, which data items are to be collected, and the source of standard for the coding rules of those items.

The Tennessee Cancer Registry also uses guidelines for cancer reporting based on suggestions by the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) Program of the National Cancer Institute, the American College of Surgeons (ACoS), and the Collaborative Staging Task Force of the American Joint Committee on Cancer. The guidelines are published in the SEER Program Coding & Staging Manual 2004, Fourth Edition, the Facility Oncology Registry Data Standards (FORDS), and Collaborative Staging Manual and Coding Instructions, Version 1.0.

The use of the ACoS’ FORDS, the SEER Program Coding and Staging Manual 2004, and the NAACCR Data Standards and Data Dictionary are not required for state reporting purposes.

For additional information regarding the ACoS FORDS, SEER Program Coding and Staging Manual 2004, Collaborative Staging Manual and Coding Instructions, or the NAACCR Data Standards and Data Dictionary, please visit the following websites: