Welcome to CiNA+ Online

Introduction

A recommendation of the report, Recommendations for Public Use Data Files of National Cancer Data, was to create a public use data file with limited variables embedded within a software system. This system will enable users to access cancer incidence information from registries of high quality in North America.

CINA+ Online was developed (11/1999 - 06/2000) as a publicly available data source. It provides access to incidence data on all NAACCR major and minor cancer sites (including pediatric groups) for North America, the United States and Canada, with individual state- or province-specific data available. The online system is a flexible interactive query system that offers a choice of custom designed tables, charts (multi-line graphs, pie charts, or bar graphs), and maps.

Charts are generated from multiple combinations of cancer sites, age groups, sex, race, geographic locations and time period, as age-standardized rates, age-specific rates, crude rates or numbers of cases. Maps can be chosen with the above variables and are displayed for countries at the state/province level. With the charts and maps, the data are presented numerically in tables. Rates can be standardized to the world, US 1970 or 1991 Canadian populations.

CINA+ Online will use 1995 as a base year and new data will be added annually in the spring. The first release (June 2000) included data up to 1997. The most recent release (December 2003) includes data from 1997 to 2001.

Navigation Help

Use the navigational push buttons (as shown below) provided when navigating CINA+ Online. Using the buttons will ensure CINA+ Online behaves in a consistent manner. While it is technically possible to use the browser history buttons in conjunction with the application buttons for navigation, the result may not always yield accurate information due to browser history pages being out of synchronization with the server-side component of CINA+ Online.

	Begin a new query from the CINA+ Online start page. This button is accessible in the query result pages. However, the application may be restarted at any time by following the link in the page header image.
	Discard all changes in the current page and go back to the previous page. This button is accessible only on interim pages.
	Send and store all changes on the current page and move to the next page.
	Send and store all changes in the current page to the application; submit the query for execution; and transfer the application state to the result page.
	Exit the application and transfer to the thank you page. Of course, the application may be terminated at any time by transferring to another website or by closing the browser.
	Re-submit the query for execution using the time period (year(s)) just prior to the current selection and transfer the application state to the result page. This button is accessible in the thematic map result page only.
	Re-submit the query for execution using the next available time period (year(s)) and transfer the application state to the result page. This button is accessible in the thematic map result page only.

Glossary of Terms

Age:

The age of the person (in years) when the cancer was diagnosed.

Age-specific Rate:

The number of cases per 100,000 persons per year within specific age groups. Five-year age groups are commonly used.

Age-standardized Rate:

A method of weighting age-specific rates to adjust rates to a population with a standard age distribution to minimize the effects of age differences in different populations. This adjustment facilitates rate comparisons between different populations or different places.

Crude Rate:

The number of new cases or deaths per 100,000 persons per year due to a disease that occur in the total population at risk.

Epidemiology:

The study of the distribution and determinants of disease in human populations.

Incidence:

The number of newly diagnosed cases of disease during a period of time (see Prevalence).

Prevalence:

The number of existing cases in a population who have the disease and have not been cured. Prevalence includes all persons who are alive and who have the disease.

Standard Population:

A population distribution that is used to create rates that have the same age structure, so that different rates can be properly compared. See age-standardized rates.

Survival Rate (crude survival rate):

The proportion of people diagnosed with cancer who are still alive after a given period, most commonly 1, 5 or 10 years after diagnosis.

Variation/Variability:

For given areas, how different the rates are from each other, or from the national value. Whenever you examine a large group of numbers, such as cancer rates across United States or Canada, there will always be some variability in the numbers due to chance, some will be higher and some will be lower.