May 2023 Newsletter

Are you aware of the impact that a Natural Language Processing (NLP) pathology solution for casefinding could have on your cancer registry’s productivity and efficiency?

A manual process for determining reportability and manually entering cases for pathology records can consume 10-15% of registry resources. With increased regulatory and accreditation requirements and shortages of CTRs, registries simply cannot afford to put a drain on FTE resources, when intelligent casefinding options are available!



Pathology reports are one of the key data sources used in the registry for casefinding, which makes it a great candidate for NLP technologies. Through the partnership between ERS and HLA-Global, ERS clients can utilize a new NLP service that addresses a key need for cancer registries by determining reportability of cases from pathology reports. Registries will quickly see an increase in efficiency of operations and a return on investment.



Would you like to learn more about how a NLP solution could benefit your registry and save time and resources? Click on the Let’s Talk button to schedule a call with Melanie Rogan, CTR, Director Growth and Strategic Services and Todd Carter, Director, Technology and Implementation Services.

A prospective study reported in The Lancet Oncology, reported that endoscopic surveillance may be an alternative to prophylactic total gastrectomy in patients at risk for hereditary diffuse gastric cancer due to germline CDH1 pathogenic variants. In the study, 270 patients with germline CDH1 variants underwent endoscopic screening and surveillance as part of a natural history study of hereditary gastric cancers.

Endoscopy was performed with nontargeted biopsies and at least one targeted biopsy and assessment of focal lesions to assess the effectiveness of endoscopic surveillance for detection of gastric signet ring cell carcinoma. Among the 270 patients, 79% had a family history of gastric cancer and 65% had a family history of breast cancer.

Signet ring cell carcinoma was detected in 63% of 120 patients who had two or more surveillance endoscopies. Of these, 74 had occult cancer detected and 2 had focal ulcerations corresponding to pT3N0 carcinoma. Thirty-six per cent of 270 patients proceeded to prophylactic total gastrectomy.

Among 43% of the 98 patients who had prophylactic total gastrectomy after endoscopy with biopsy samples negative for cancer, multifocal stage IA gastric carcinoma was detected in 93%. In these patients, endoscopic cancer surveillance was an acceptable alternative to surgery in individuals with CDH1 variants who declined total gastrectomy.



The low rate of incident tumors (> T1a) suggests that surveillance might be a rational alternative to surgery in individuals with CDH1 variants.

It was so great to see many of you connect with us at the ERS Booth at NCRA 2023 and appreciate you for making us a part of your NCRA experience. We were pleased that so many of you stayed for a moment to chat. And for those attending the conference virtually, we were glad to see that so many of you stopped by our virtual booth as well!

Congratulations go to DeLane King from Saint Luke's Health System, the winner of the 2023 NCRA ERS raffle. She won a Michael Kors Shoulder Bag!

At this conference, you heard us talk about our emphasis on Natural Language Processing (NLP) and the impact it can have on your cancer registry's productivity and efficency, as well as our Automated Data Exchange solutions. Please reach out to us for more information about these solutions and how they can help your registry become the hub of the cancer center at your facility!

Hope to see all of you next year in Indianapolis!

The latest episode of the Cancer Registry World podcast featuring guest Lori A. Swain, MS, Executive Director for the National Cancer Registrars Association (NCRA) and NCRA Education Foundation is now available! She joins Dr. Frederick L. Greene to discuss the history and current leadership role of the NCRA and the future of the cancer registrar profession.

Lori discusses the history of the NCRA including the upcoming 50th anniversary as well as what's coming for the future for the registry profession and the renaming of the CTR credential. She also shares her thoughts about the value of the CTR and the cancer registry, the best kept secret in the cancer surveillance community.

Previous episodes with guests Loria A. Pollack, Shirley Dalrymple, Robert K. Brookland, Timothy W. Mullett, Catherine Bieker, Jon Patrick, Barbara Dearmon, Lejla Hadzikadic-Gusic, William Laffey, Rohit Nayak, Mellisa Wheeler, Lillie D. Shockney, and Karen Mason, are still available on our website or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts, including ApplePodcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, iHeartRadio and TuneIn.

Our May tip of the month highlights CRStar’s new and enhanced Ad Hoc Graph for a Population. While maintaining the great features of this useful ad hoc report, it has been enhanced for even more flexibility. Users now have the ability to run an infinite number of custom graphs on a single population at once.

Users still have the ability to choose the graph type for individual reports (pie, bar or line) using either codes or descriptions for any field in the abstract, including fields from the Accreditation Tracker as well as user defined fields. When choosing the screen as the report device, users can choose their unique color schemes for individual graphs. Once the reports are run, the user can modify both the color scheme and graph type directly from the screen output. In addition to the data sorting from the highest to the lowest number, the report may now be sorted alphabetically.

All reports are created on one screen with multiple tabs for individual reports, as shown in the example below. These reports may also be sent to Excel for further customization. The new enhanced Graph for a Population is a great report for special studies and for clinical and administrative requests for data on the same population of cases and saves the user valuable time by allowing for multiple report generation with one effort.

For more information, please refer to the CRStar Resource Page and look under the Training section for Enhanced CRStar Reporting Module Tutorials for both written documentation and "How To" videos. A member of our support team is always available for assistance. Users may log in to the Support Portal at the link below.

Do you love CRStar?

So do we and we are offering our loyal customers the chance to earn a $200 gift card when a Cancer Program that you refer becomes an ERS customer!

Please click "Refer CRStar" below if you know of any Cancer Programs that could benefit from CRStar and the advantages that CRStar users enjoy and rely on.

Let's grow our CRStar community together!

Terms and conditions can be found on the CRStar Referral Form.

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