• Shawn S Groth, Elizabeth B Habermann, and Nader N Massarweh.
• Department of Surgery, Division of General Thoracic Surgery, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, Texas. Electronic address: shawn.groth@bcm.edu.
• Ann. Thorac. Surg. 2020 Mar 1; 109 (3): 636-644.

BackgroundData from administrative claims and cancer registries have an ever-expanding role in thoracic surgery health services and health policy research. However, their strengths, limitations, and appropriate applications are often poorly understood, leading to errors in study design and data interpretation. The intent of this review is to discuss relevant and crucial considerations when conducting research with some of the most common national thoracic surgery data sources.MethodsInformation on the National Cancer Database; National Inpatient Sample; American College of Surgeons National Surgical Quality Improvement Project; Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) Database; SEER-linked databases; The Society of Thoracic Surgery General Thoracic Surgery Database; and state cancer registries were obtained from the official webpages for these databases and from a review of PubMed (1990 to July 1, 2019).ResultsWe provided a review of the above-mentioned commonly used administrative databases and cancer registries in thoracic surgery health services research, with particular attention toward their strengths and limitations.ConclusionsAn appreciation of the strengths, limitations, and differences between various sources of data from administrative, hospital-based, and population-based cancer registries is equally essential for investigators to improve the quality and accuracy of their research and for readers to properly interpret the results of such studies.Copyright © 2020 The Society of Thoracic Surgeons. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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