Pattern of Gastric Cancer Incidence in Iran is Changed after Correcting the Misclassification Error

The main aim of the present study was to map the real high risk regions of gastric cancer (GC) using corrected data for misclassification error in all Iranian provinces.

In this cross-sectional study, the data were extracted from the reports of Ministry of Health and Medical Education and previous studies on correcting GC registered data including 30 provinces in 2008. The information about socioeconomic factors was extracted from the statistical centers of Iran. To estimate the model parameters, the Bayesian approach was used with regards to spatial correlation due to adjacent effects.

The southern and northern provinces were introduced as high-risk regions and the central provinces were introduced as low-risk regions. The mean household income was inversely associated with the risk of GC.

The real high-risk regions of GC in Iran are the north and south border provinces which should be considered by health policy makers. It is also necessary to correct misclassified registered data which can lead to seduction in health service allocation.