© 2015 INTM, Italy. Published by Wichig Publishing TJ ISSN 0300-8916 Tumori 2015; 101(4): 440-446 ORIGINAL ReseARch ARTIcLe cancer center. The importance of CCCRs is also underlined by the Organisaion of European Cancer Insitutes (OECI) (7): in fact, the comprehensive cancer center accreditaion assess- ment (8, 9) includes the presence of a cancer registraion sys- tem in OECI candidate cancer centers. The Fondazione IRCCS “Isituto Nazionale dei Tumori” (INT) in Milan is a naional oncology reference center, estab- lished in 1928, for care and research. Isituto Nazionale dei Tumori acivity is relected by the 21,650 hospitalizaions and over 1.2 million services incurred in 2013 (e.g., diagnosis, laboratory, outpaient, radiotherapy) (10). This acivity pro- duces a mulitude of data that are currently diicult to be accessed, used, and shared in a uniform way. For this rea- son, INT is establishing CCCRs for speciic oncologic patholo- gies, which would allow researchers and clinicians to quickly idenify cases of interest, with access to a predeined set of demographic, clinical, and biological variables collected in a standardized way. Since October 1, 2011, an insituional clinical registry for breast cancer is in place, bearing clinical, pathologic, and biomolecular data of all cases operated in the INT Breast Surgery Unit and, in the same period, INT has DOI: 10.5301/tj.5000341 A breast cancer clinical registry in an Italian comprehensive cancer center: an instrument for descripive, clinical, and experimental research Paolo Baili 1 , Michele Torresani 2 , Roberto Agresi 3 , Giuseppe Rosito 2 , Maria Grazia Daidone 4 , Silvia Veneroni 4 , Ilaria Cavallo 1 , Francesco Funaro 1 , Marco Giunco 2 , Alberto Turco 1 , Hade Amash 1 , Antonio Scavo 4 , Pamela Minicozzi 1 , Francesca Bella 1 , Elisabeta Meneghini 1 , Milena Sant 1 1 Analyic Epidemiology and Health Impact Unit, Fondazione IRCCS “Isituto Nazionale dei Tumori”, Milan - Italy 2 Informaion and Communicaions Technology Unit, Fondazione IRCCS “Isituto Nazionale dei Tumori”, Milan - Italy 3 Breast Surgery Unit, Fondazione IRCCS “Isituto Nazionale dei Tumori”, Milan - Italy 4 Experimental Oncology Department, Fondazione IRCCS “Isituto Nazionale dei Tumori”, Milan - Italy Introducion Cancer registraion may be performed both at populaion and clinical levels. Populaion-based cancer registries (PBCRs) are considered a pillar of cancer control (1-4); however, they do not rouinely collect detailed clinical and biomolecular characterisics of the cancer (5), and few of them are con- nected with biobanks (6). By contrast, clinical research is typically based on data from the cancer center-based clinical registries (CCCRs), which can rouinely collect data on clinical and biological characterisics of all paients treated at the ABsTRAcT In clinical research, many potenially useful variables are available via the rouine acivity of cancer center-based clinical registries (CCCR). We present the experience of the breast cancer clinical registry at Fondazione IRCCS “Isituto Nazionale dei Tumori” to give an example of how a CCCR can be planned, implemented, and used. Five criteria were taken into consideraion while planning our CCCR: (a) available clinical and administraive databases ought to be exploited to the maximum extent; (b) open source sotware should be used; (c) a Web-based inter- face must be designed; (d) CCCR data must be compaible with populaion-based cancer registry data; (e) CCCR must be an open system, able to be connected with other data repositories. The amount of work needed for the implementaion of a CCCR is inversely linked with the amount of available coded data: the fewer data are avail- able in the input databases as coded variables, the more work will be necessary, for informaion technology staf, text mining analysis, and registrars (for collecing data from clinical records). A cancer registry in a comprehen- sive cancer center can be used for several research aspects, such as esimate of the number of cases needed for clinical studies, assessment of biobank specimens with speciic characterisics, evaluaion of clinical pracice and adhesion to clinical guidelines, comparaive studies between clinical and populaion sets of paients, studies on cancer prognosis, and studies on cancer survivorship. Keywords: Breast cancer, Breast cancer registry, Clinical cancer registry, Comprehensive cancer center Accepted: December 23, 2014 Published online: May 2, 2015 corresponding author: Paolo Baili Analyic Epidemiology and Health Impact Unit Fondazione IRCCS “Isituto Nazionale dei Tumori” Via Venezian 1 20133 Milan, Italy lifetable@isitutotumori.mi.it