Overview
Cancer groups traditionally used by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) for reporting incidence and survival statistics were defined by the primary site of the cancer. Because treatment and survival can differ by histological type for a site, the AIHW has developed histological classifications for selected sites. The classifications are used for reporting cancer incidence and survival statistics stratified by site and histology on the AIHW website.
Details
Since 2022, the AIHW has been reviewing site-histology combinations that occur in the Australian Cancer Database. For combinations deemed unlikely, the Australian population-based cancer registries (PBCRs), who provide these data annually to AIHW, were asked to review their cases and, if necessary, provide corrected data. A customised histological classification was then developed for each of the selected sites/types. As far as possible the classifications were aligned with the most recent World Health Organization (WHO) classifications available (4th or 5th edition) but PBCR data contain many more histological codes than are discussed by the WHO.
The data are available to the public in an online data visualisation tool:
Users select a site and histology group and can then see graphs of incidence and survival trends over time since 2001. For example, 5-year relative survival for pancreatic cancer during 2015–2019 was 12.5%, but restricted to adenocarcinoma (65% of cases) or neuroendocrine neoplasms (10%), survival was 8.3% and 73.7%, respectively.
The histology groups range from the very broad (e.g., “carcinomas”) to specific histological types and subtypes (e.g., “adenosquamous carcinoma”). The data can be stratified by sex and age group and can be downloaded for free. The sites/types currently available are bladder, brain, breast, colorectum, gynaecological, haematological, kidney, liver, lung, cutaneous melanoma, mesothelioma, pancreas, prostate and thyroid. More sites will be added over time.