The National Registry of Childhood Tumours

The National Registry of Childhood Tumours (NRCT) is the largest population-based childhood cancer registry in the world. The NRCT aims to collect reliable information on every child under 15 years of age who has been diagnosed with cancer while resident in Great Britain (England, Scotland or Wales) from 1962 onwards. Children with cancer from Northern Ireland have been included since 1993. In addition, The NRCT also includes a population-based series of childhood cancer deaths for 1953-61 (originally the Oxford Survey of Childhood Cancers) and a series of children diagnosed before 1962 who survived at least three years.

By the end of 2010 the NRCT held records on more than 89,000 children, identifying the details of their tumour occurrence. The overwhelming majority of diagnoses are malignant, but benign tumours of the brain are also routinely registered. Follow-up data include records of multiple primary tumours and deaths. Birth records are included for a large proportion of the registrations.

Increasingly we are able to reliably link NRCT data to other data sources, and to acquire additional information from them. Hospital Episode Statistics (HES), Cancer Waiting Time (CWT) and Radiotherapy Episode Statistics (RES) are the best examples of such sources to which we have access for children diagnosed in more recent years.