Estimates of lung and pancreatic cancer survival in Sweden with and without inclusion of death certificate initiated (DCI) cases.

Lung and pancreatic cancers are underreported to the SCR yielding too low incidence rates and upward biased survival estimates. We conclude that implementation of systematic death certificate processing with trace-back is feasible also within the Swedish system with regionalized cancer reporting. Verifying registrability by use of information in the Patient Register provided a good approximation of "corrected" survival estimates based on chart review.