To validate the use of the February 2025 submission data for predicting the eventual rates and trends through 2023, data from one year earlier are used. In this case both the February and subsequent November submissions are both available. The delay-adjusted rates and trends for cases diagnosed through 2022 are derived from the February 2024 submission and compared to those from the November 2024 submission. The comparisons are based on: (1) the delay-adjusted rates for 2022 and (2) the direction and statistical significance of the final Joinpoint segment. To compare the 2022 delay-adjusted rates from the November and February 2024 submissions, the ratio of these two rates is computed for each of the cancer site/sex combinations. Ideally the distribution of these ratios should be centered around 1, with the variability as small as possible.

Validation Summary

Three validation metrics are used to summarize the results.

The first metric is the number of series where the statistical significance of the final Joinpoint segment changed (or the direction of the final segment changed from trending significantly upward to significantly downward or vice-versa), when comparing the February and November 2024 submissions. Of the 42 series (18 cancer sites by sex, and 6 single sex cancer sites) only six changes of this type were observed (and many of these represented modest changes in final segment annual percent change).

The second metric is a comparison of the 2022 delay-adjusted rates from the November and February 2023 submissions. The ratio of these two delay-adjusted rates is computed for each of the cancer site/sex combinations. Ideally the distribution of these ratios should be centered around 1, with the variability as small as possible. For the nine SEER 17 registries where the February submission meets the 95% completeness criteria, the median of these 42 ratios for the delay adjusted rates for cases diagnosed in 2022 is 1.002. In contrast, the median of these 42 ratios for the observed (i.e., non-delay adjusted) rates is 1.055, meaning that the observed rates for the November 2023 submission are, on average, about 5.5% larger than the ones based on the February 2023 submission. The delay adjustment process successfully makes the rates for 2022 from these two submissions coincide.

The validation table also includes the trends for cases diagnosed from 2000-2021 based on the November 2023 submission for the same nine registies. In cases where the statistical significance of the final Joinpoint segment changed (or the direction of the final segment changed from trending significantly upward to significantly downward or vice-versa) between the 2000-2021 November 2023 submission and the 2000-2022 February 2024 submission indicated that the preliminary incidence estimates were suggesting a change for the most recent trend for this cancer. The third validation metric indicates whether this change detected in the preliminary estimates was supported by the results from the November 2024 submission. The table below shows 12 instances out of the 42 total cancer site and sex combination where a new trend was suggested by the preliminary estimates. These suggested new trends were borne out in 8 of the 12 (highlighted in green), and were not verified in 4 of the 12 (highlighted in yellow).

Based on these results using the February 2024 and November 2024 submissions for 2000-2022, a decision was made to utilize registries where the February 2024 submission met the 95% completeness criteria to produce preliminary rates and trends for cases diagnosed in 2000-2023. However, as described in the methodology section, two new criteria for including registries in the preliminary estimates were added. The first added SEER expansion registries (beyond those in SEER 17) who had enough February submissions to conduct delay modeling, and the second included only registries that had ratios of the case counts from their initial February and November submissions greater than 0.90 averaged over the most recent six November submissions, and the standard deviation of these six ratios had to be less than 0.05. After applying all of these criteria, the preliminary estimates from the February 2025 submission for cases diagnosed from 2000-2023 included the following 12 registries: Alaska Natives, Connecticut, Georgia, Greater Bay, Hawaii, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, New Jersey, New York, Seattle, and Utah. These registries represent approximately 23% of the U.S. population, and 50% of the population of the Official Release of SEER 21registries. This criteria for included registries in the preliminary estimates will be evaluated in future years, and may change.