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CANCER REGISTRY PROJECT MANUALS
The MECC promotes common standards for cancer registration through publication of manuals and standards. In doing so, the MECC has recently published "Standard Operating Procedures for MECC Registries", a set of guidelines which outlines how each of the MECC Registries should conduct their day-to-day operations. It is modeled on standards published by the North American Association of Central Cancer Registries (NAACCR): Standards for Completeness, Quality, Analysis, and Management of Data (Vol. III), but has been modified as appropriate for use in the Middle Eastern countries participating in MECC. The "MECC Manual of Coding and Staging - Fifth Edition" describes each of the data elements collected by MECC Registries, some of which are optional at the discretion of each participating registry. The manner in which each data item is to be encoded is documented in this manual along with detailed coding instructions. The first four editions of this manual were published under the title of "Manual of Standards for Cancer Registration", but the title of this Fifth Edition has been changed to avoid confusion with the Standard Operating Procedures" publication described above. Each edition of the Coding and Staging Manual has been modeled on the US SEER Program Coding Manual for most of the required data elements in order to assure comparability of data. The Fourth Edition of the Manual was published in 2005 and is available in English or Greek.
CANCER REGISTRY DATA ACCESS
MECC grants access to its non-confidential data to persons who have a valid scientific interest in the data, are engaged in demographic, epidemiological, or other similar studies related to health, and agree in writing to meet the guidelines established by MECC Executive and Steering Committees. As further described in the publication Access to Non-confidential MECC data, individuals seeking access must provide information sufficient to justify the request.