The stage at diagnosis is one of the most important predictors for cancer survival. TNM stage is constructed from T (tumor size), N (nodal spread), and M (distant metastasis) components. In many notifications to cancer registries, TNM information is incomplete with unknown N and/or M. We aimed to evaluate the influence of various assumptions for recoding missing N (NX) and M (MX) as N0 and M0 on the proportion with available TNM stage, stage-distribution, and stage-specific relative survival.
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