ArticleBreast cancer research and treatment2023
Implications of missing data on reported breast cancer mortality.
Article in Breast cancer research and treatment, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 42 papers, 3 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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Who cites it
42 citing papers in PubMed, 3 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Rural-Urban Disparities in Colorectal Cancer Screening, Diagnosis, Treatment, and Survivorship Care: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.The oncologist · 2024Pooled it
- Prognostic Tools for Older Women with Breast Cancer: A Systematic Review.Medicina (Kaunas, Lithuania) · 2023Pooled it
- Risks of second non-breast primaries following breast cancer in women: a systematic review and meta-analysis.Breast cancer research : BCR · 2023Pooled it
- Locally Ablative Therapies in Oligometastatic Breast Cancer.JAMA surgery · 2026Article
- Questions regarding the reduction of the incidence of stage 4 breast cancer in Europe.The Lancet regional health. Europe · 2026Article
- Cancer-specific survival patterns in patients with bone metastasis: a registry-based analysis of 13,742 patients.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Missingness in the National Cancer Database: A Novel Surrogate for Hepatobiliary Cancer Outcomes.Annals of surgical oncology · 2026Article
- Article
- Survival Disparities in Patients With Metastatic Breast Cancer.JCO oncology practice · 2026Article
- Data Sources for Clinical T1 Renal Masses and the Potential for Bias.Clinical genitourinary cancer · 2025Article
- The ICGC ARGO data dictionary for standardizing global cancer clinical data.Scientific data · 2025Article
- Surgical Considerations for Patients With De Novo Metastatic Breast Cancer Based on Prognostic Group.The Journal of surgical research · 2025Article
- Neoadjuvant Chemotherapy is Not Associated with Improved Overall Survival in Metaplastic Breast Cancer Regardless of Tumor Subtype.Annals of surgical oncology · 2025Article
- Global socioeconomic inequalities in breast, cervical, ovarian, and uterine cancers incidence, mortality, disability-adjusted life year's rates: a relative concentration index analysis.BMC women's health · 2025Article
- Adjusting for Population Differences in the National Cancer Database to Better Represent United States Cancer Cases: A Reference Tool for Researchers.Annals of surgical oncology · 2025Article
- Survival outcomes after pathologic complete response with neoadjuvant endocrine therapy vs. neoadjuvant chemotherapy: a retrospective national database study.Breast cancer research and treatment · 2025Article
- Adjuvant Radiation vs Endocrine Therapy After Lumpectomy for Early-Stage Breast Cancer in Older Women: Analysis of Real-World Survival Outcomes.Annals of surgical oncology · 2025Article
- Are More Young, Western Patients Also Developing Hepatocellular Carcinoma?Annals of surgical oncology · 2025Article
- Comparison of survival outcomes for patients with Stage III vs de novo Stage IV breast cancer.Cancer · 2025Article
- Racial and ethnic disparities in conversion to mastectomy following lumpectomy.Breast cancer research and treatment · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
8 authors.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundNational cancer registries are valuable tools to analyze patterns of care and clinical outcomes; yet, missing data may impact the accuracy and generalizability of these data. We sought to evaluate the association between missing data and overall survival (OS).
methodsUsing the NCDB (National Cancer Database) and SEER (Surveillance, Epidemiology, End Results Program), we assessed data missingness among patients diagnosed with invasive breast cancer from 2010 to 2014. Key variables included demographic (age, race, ethnicity, insurance, education, income), tumor (grade, ER, PR, HER2, TNM stages), and treatment (surgery in both databases; chemotherapy and radiation in NCDB). OS was compared between those with and without missing data using Cox proportional hazards models.
resultsOverall, 775,996 patients in the NCDB and 263,016 in SEER were identified; missing at least 1 key variable occurred for 29% and 13%, respectively. Of those, the overwhelming majority (NCDB 80%; SEER 88%) were missing tumor variables. When compared to patients with complete data, missingness was associated with a greater risk of death: NCDB HR 1.23 (99% CI 1.21-1.25) and SEER HR 2.11 (99% CI 2.05-2.18). Patients with complete tumor data had higher unadjusted OS estimates than that of the entire sample: NCDB 82.7% vs 81.8% and SEER 83.5% vs 81.7% for 5-year OS.
conclusionsMissingness of select variables is not uncommon within large national cancer registries and is associated with a worse OS. Exclusion of patients with missing variables may introduce unintended bias into analyses and result in findings that underestimate breast cancer mortality.
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