Text area for manual documentation of all surgical procedures that provide information for staging.

Text documentation is an essential component of a complete electronic report and is heavily utilized for quality control and special studies. Text is needed to justify coded values and to document supplemental information not transmitted within coded values. High-quality text documentation facilitates consolidation of information from multiple reporting sources at the central registry.

The text field must contain a description that has been entered by the reporter independently from the code(s). If software generates text automatically from codes, the text cannot be utilized to check coded values. Information documenting the disease process should be entered manually from the medical record and should not be generated electronically from coded values. 

Instructions

• Prioritize entered information in the order of the fields listed below.
• Text automatically generated from coded data is not acceptable.
• NAACCR-approved abbreviations should be utilized (see Appendix G).
• Do not repeat information from other text fields.
• Additional comments can be continued in empty text fields, including Remarks. For text documentation that is continued from one text field to another, use asterisks or other symbols to indicate the connection with preceding text.
• If information is missing from the record, state that it is missing.
• Do not include irrelevant information.
• Do not include information that the registry is not authorized to collect.

Note: For software that allows unlimited text, NAACCR recommends that the software indicate to the reporter the portion of the text that will be transmitted to the central registry. 

Suggestions for text:

• Dates and descriptions of biopsies and all other surgical procedures from which staging information was derived
• Number of lymph nodes removed
• Size of tumor removed
• Documentation of residual tumor
• Evidence of invasion of surrounding areas
• Reason primary site surgery could not be completed

Data Item(s) to be verified/validated using the text entered in this field After manual entry of the text field, ensure that the text entered both agrees with the coded values and clearly justifies the selected codes in the following fields:

Item name	Item number
Date of Diagnosis	390
RX Summ--Dx/Stg Proc	1350
Diagnostic Confirmation	490
Primary Site	400
RX Hosp--Dx/Stg Proc	740
RX Summ--Surg Prim Site	1290
Collaborative Stage variables	2800-2930
SEER Summary Stage 1977	760
SEER Summary Stage 2000	759
Reason for No Surgery	1340
Summary Stage 2018	764
AJCC TNM Data Items	1001-1036
EOD Data Items	772-776
Site-specific SSDI Data Items	3801-3937