Cancer PathCHART: Communications and Frequently Asked Questions

Cancer Pathology Coding Histology And Registration Terminology (Cancer PathCHART) is a collaborative initiative that aims to improve quality of tumor site, histology, and behavior data captured by cancer registrars.

Tumor site, histology, and behavior are the three most important variables captured by cancer registrars that serve as the foundation for all subsequent data collection. Tumor morphology is the combination of tumor type (histology) and behavior.

Organized by the Surveillance Research Program at the National Cancer Institute, the Cancer PathCHART collaboration involves eleven U.S., North American, and global organizations, including cancer registries and cancer registrar, pathology, clinical, and global health organizations.

The tumor site-morphology standards for valid and impossible combinations, used by cancer registrars in North America, have not had a major review and revision in over 15 years. Over this time, changes in tumor histologic classifications and coding have occurred. Cancer PathCHART is updating these standards to improve cancer surveillance data quality.

The tumor site-morphology standards updated for implementation for cases diagnosed as of January 1, 2024 are now downloadable as the 2024 Cancer PathCHART ICD-O-3 Site Morphology Validation List in four file formats (CSV, XLSX, XML, JSON) from the Product Downloads and Timelines page. These standards will also be incorporated into cancer registration software and will serve as the content for a future Cancer PathCHART standards search tool.

Cancer researchers can use the standards for what tumor morphologies are valid to know which ones to aggregate by tumor site for site-specific cancer research.