Recap of the Missouri Tumor Registrars Association &
Kansas Cancer Registrars Association Bi-State Regional Meeting
“Registrars: The Gem of Cancer Data”
The Argosy Casino, Hotel & Spa – Riverside Missouri
October 25th – 27th, 2017
Submitted by Jennifer Huffman, BS, CTR – The theme of this year’s meeting was “Registrars: The Gems of Cancer Data”. As attendees arrived and registered, their name tags had a colored gem attached. Each color represented total years of service in the registry profession. My gem was yellow, for 6-10 years of service. The elder CTR’s said that our group knew “just enough to be dangerous”. There were several CTR’s with 31+ years of service so we had a great mix of attendees.
The meeting kicked off on Wednesday, October 25th with a presentation by Dr. Stephanie Graff titled “2018 AJCC Staging Update in Breast Cancer – Where Genomics Meet Staging”. She started off by saying that the AJCC 8th Edition is dedicated to all cancer registrars in recognition of their hard work and dedication to the cancer registry.
The most interesting part of the discussion was adding prognostic factors to the new 9th edition staging and how it will change the staging for about 40% of breast cancer patients. You must have grade, ER, PR and HER2 now to be able to stage breast cancer. If you only have TNM without all 4 prognostic factors, the stage will be 99. There are several instances where adding prognostic factors will change for instance a stage 3 breast cancer to a stage 1.
We worked on several case review exercises for different sites using the new 8th edition staging. It is going to be very challenging for CTR’s to learn the new system.
Registry Partners raffled off two Visa Gift Cards. We would like to Congratulate the lucky winners: Sherri Goodwin (left) from Missouri and Terry Sigmund (right) from Kansas.
Sherri Goodwin (left) from Missouri and Terry Sigmund (right) from Kansas.