Introducción: El cáncer constituye una carga en el mundo, en especial para los países menos desarrollados. Los Registros Poblacionales de Cáncer son fundamentales para conocer los perfiles territoriales del cáncer y la evaluación del impacto de sus programas de control.Objetivo: Estimar la incidencia y mortalidad por cáncer en el Área Metropolitana de Bucaramanga en el período 2008-2012.Métodos: Se realizó un estudio poblacional descriptivo de la incidencia y mortalidad por cáncer en el Área Metropolitana de Bucaramanga. Los casos de cáncer invasivos primarios del periodo 2008-2012 se obtuvieron de la base del RPC-AMB. Los datos de población y defunciones fueron facilitados por el Departamento Administrativo Nacional de Estadística (DANE). Se estimaron tasas crudas de incidencia y mortalidad globales y específicas por sexo, y tasas de incidencia y mortalidad estandarizadas.Resultados: Durante el quinquenio se registraron 8,775 casos incidentes de cáncer (excluyendo cáncer de piel no melanoma). Las tasas de incidencia estandarizada globales por 100,000 personas-año fueron de 151.7 en hombres y 157.2 en mujeres. Las principales localizaciones fueron próstata, estómago y colorrecto, en los hombres, y mama, tiroides y colorrecto en las mujeres. La tasa de mortalidad estandarizada por 100,000 personas-año fue de 94.8 en hombres y de 78.0 en mujeres.Conclusión: Las tasas de incidencia y mortalidad en la mayoría de localizaciones son inferiores a las nacionales y al quinquenio previo en el Área Metropolitana de Bucaramanga. El cáncer de tiroides, colorrectal, y las leucemias muestran una tendencia al aumento, lo cual demanda indagaciones posteriores.

Gastric cancer (GC) is a public health issue with high incidence and mortality in Colombia due to tardy diagnosis and barriers to access to curative treatment; this leaves palliative care (PC) as the only option. Our aim is to describe the access barriers to PC perceived by adults with GC, caregivers and physician in Santander, Colombia. A qualitative study was carried out with the analysis of the grounded theory (Strauss and Corbin), through semi-structured interviews, after sampling for convenience we found that the access barriers were: administrative, economic, cultural, knowledge, communication, institutional and geographical; strategies to overcome barriers: screening programs, governmental surveillance, and investment in health. In conclusion, access to PC requires remove barriers to timely and integral access and strengthen health and education policies to facilitate procedures and services that ensure the attention required by the adult with GC.

Introduction: Cancer is an important cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide. Population-based cancer registries (PB­CRs) make possible to estimate the burden of this condition. Objetive: To estimate cancer incidence and mortality rates in the Bucaramanga Metropolitan Area (BMA) during 2003-2007. Methods: Incident cases of invasive cancer diagnosed during 2003-2007 were identified from the Bucaramanga Metropolitan Area PBCR (BMA-PBCR). Population counts and mortality were obtained from the Colombian National Administrative De­partment of Statistics (NADS). We estimated total and cancer-specific crude incidence and mortality rates by age group and sex, as well as age-standardized (Segi’s world population) incidence (ASIR[W]) and mortality (ASMR[W]) rates. Statistical analyses were conducted using CanReg4 and Stata/IC 10.1. Results: We identified 8,225 new cases of cancer excluding non-melanoma skin cancer (54.3% among women). Of all cases, 6,943 (84.4%) were verified by microscopy and 669 (8.1%) were detected only by death certificate. ASIR(W) for all invasive cancers was 162.8 per 100,000 women and 177.6 per 100,000 men. Breast, cervix, colorectal, stomach and thyroid were the most common types of cancer in women. In men, the corresponding malignancies were prostate, stomach, colorectal, lung and lymphoma. ASMR(W) was 84.5 per 100,000 person-years in women and 106.2 per 100,000 person-years in men. Breast and stomach cancer ranked first as causes of death in those groups, respectively. Conclusion: Overall, mortality rates in our region are higher than national estimates possibly due to limited effectiveness of secondary prevention strategies. Our work emphasizes the importance of maintaining high-quality, nationwide PBCRs.

Acute leukemia is the most common childhood cancer and has been associated with exposure to environmental carcinogens. This study aimed to identify clusters of acute childhood leukemia (ACL) cases and analyze their relationship with proximity to industrial sources of air pollution in three capital cities in Colombia during 2000–2015. Incident ACL cases were obtained from the population cancer registries for the cities of Bucaramanga, Cali, and Medellín. The inventory of industrial sources of emissions to the air was obtained from the regional environmental authorities and industrial conglomerates were identified. The Kulldorf’s circular scan test was used to detect city clusters and to identify clusters around industrial conglomerates. Multivariable spatial modeling assessed the effect of distance and direction from the industrial conglomerates controlling for socioeconomic status. We identified industrials sectors within a buffer of 1 km around industrial conglomerates related to the ACL clusters. Incidence rates showed geographical heterogeneity with low spatial autocorrelation within cities. The spatio-temporal tests identified one cluster in each city. The industries located within 1 km around the ACL clusters identified in the three cities represent different sectors. Exposure to air pollution from industrial sources might be contributing to the incidence of ACL cases in urban settings in Colombia.

Background. Estimation of survival requires follow-up of patients from diagnosis until death ensuring complete and good quality data. Many population-based cancer registries in low- and middle-income countries have difficulties linking registry data with regional or national vital statistics, increasing the chances of cases lost to follow-up. The impact of lost to follow-up cases on survival estimates from small population-based cancer registries (500 cases) has been understudied, and bias could be larger than in larger registries. Methods. We simulated scenarios based on idealized real data from three population-based cancer registries to assess the impact of loss to follow-up on 1-5-year overall and net survival for stomach, colon, and thyroid cancerscancer types with very different prognosis. Multiple scenarios with varying of lost to follow-up proportions (1-20) and sample sizes of (100-500 cases) were carried out. We investigated the impact of excluding versus censoring lost to follow-up cases; punctual and bootstrap confidence intervals for the average bias are presented. Results. Censoring of lost to follow-up cases lead to overestimation of the overall survival, this effect was strongest for cancers with a poor prognosis and increased with follow-up time and higher proportion of lost to follow-up cases; these effects were slightly larger for net survival than overall survival. Excluding cases lost to follow-up did not generate a bias on survival estimates on average, but in individual cases, there were under- and overestimating survival. For gastric, colon, and thyroid cancer, relative bias on 5-year cancer survival with 1 of lost to follow-up varied between 6 and 125, 2 and 40, and 0.1 and 1.0, respectively. Conclusion. Estimation of cancer survival from small population-based registries must be interpreted with caution: even small proportions of censoring, or excluding lost to follow-up cases can inflate survival, making it hard to interpret comparison across regions or countries.

We aimed to improve the available information on morphology and stage for cutaneous melanoma in the population-based cancer registry of the Bucaramanga Metropolitan Area in Colombia. The incidence and survival rates and the distribution of melanoma patients by age, gender, anatomical subsite, and histological subtype were calculated. All 113 melanoma patients (median age 61) were followed up (median time 7.4 years). This exercise (filling in missing information in the registry by manual search of patient clinical record and other available information) yielded more identified invasive melanomas and cases with complete information on anatomical localization and stage. Age-standardized incidence and mortality rates were 1.86 and 1.08, being slightly higher for males. Most melanomas were localized on the lower limbs, followed by the trunk. For 35% of all melanomas, the morphological subtype remained unknown. Most of the remaining melanomas were nodular and acral lentiginous melanomas. Overall global and relative 5-year survival was 61.6% and 71.3%, respectively, with poorer survival for males than females. Melanomas on the head and neck and unspecified anatomical sites had the worst survival. Patients without stage information in their medical files had excellent survival, unlike patients for whom medical files were no longer available. This study shows the possibility of improving data availability and the importance of good quality population-based data.