Incorporating active registration in existing health services may increase access for households that are burdened by the current process [ 24].
Incident cases, diagnosed between July 1995 and December 1997, were reported by an active registration system through hospitals and pathologists.
For this an active registration team was set up, evolving into the regional cancer registry, which has become complete for the detection of all cancers from 1987 onwards.
An active registration process is implemented by trained tumour registration officers (TROs) each of whom has responsibility for recording data on newly diagnosed cancers from a defined group of hospitals.
A random date was selected within the active registration period for each patient, ensuring at least six months of prior registration, and three months of follow-up during 2005 to 2010.
This could have been the result of the computerization of clinical records that took place between 2000 and 2004 at our institution, which required active registration of the date of diagnosis by the health care professional.
Patients of all ages were selected from the population registered with the Clinical Practice Research Datalink with an active registration status at any point during the study period, between 1 January 1999 and 30 March 2011.
As there was no dedicated cancer centre in this rural area, we had to pursue an active registration method by visiting all health-care facilities of the taluk and outside where cancer patients are seen (Jayalekshmy et al, 2008).
