 Cover of the WHO blue book on Digestive System Tumours, 5th edition | |
Digestive System Tumours Breast tumours Soft tissue and bone tumours Female genital tumours Thoracic tumours | |
| Edited by | WHO Classification of Tumours Group (World Health Organization) |
|---|---|
| Country | France |
| Discipline | Tumours |
| Publisher | International Agency for Research on Cancer |
| Preceded by | International Histological Classification of Tumors |
The WHO Classification of Tumours, more commonly known as the WHO Blue Books, is a series of books that classify tumours. They are compiled by expert consensus and published by the World Health Organization's (WHO) International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC). They appear in print and online in a series of 15 books, each of which focuses on a major tumour group and defines the cause, mechanism, signs and symptoms, basic structure, diagnosis, epidemiology and outcomes of up to 300 types of tumours.
The project was started by the WHO in 1956 and the first series of books was published between 1967 and 1981, as the International Histological Classification of Tumors series. A fifth series was released in 2019. Terms included in the books appear in the international classification of diseases for tumours.
The classifications are regularly updated by an editorial board composed mostly of practicing pathologists. The method of classifying tumours in the Blue Books was discussed in an accompanying article in the International Journal of Cancer in June 2020, titled "WHO Classification of Tumours: How should tumors be classified? Expert consensus, systematic reviews or both?"[1]