Age-related variations in progression of cancer at diagnosis and completeness of cancer registry data

There is some evidence that stage and grade at diagnosis of cancer decreases with age and that the availability of data on state and grade of cancer decreases with age. This may be because older people tend to receive less intensive investigation of cancer but this has not been confirmed. We investigated the relationship between age at diagnosis of cancer and both stage and grade at diagnosis, and the chances of data on stage or grade at diagnosis being unavailable, in people with colorectal cancer (it 12,419) and women with breast cancer (n = 12,793) using 2 years of cancer registry data from the north of England. Stage and grade decreased with increasing age in colorectal cancer. Grade decreased but stage increased with increasing age in women with breast cancer. The chances of data on stage and grade at diagnosis being unavailable increased with age in all cases. (C) 2004 Published by Elsevier Ltd.