Estimates of cancer incidence and mortality in Europe in 2008
Introduction
Accurate statistics on cancer occurrence and outcome are essential both for the purposes of research (into causes, prevention and treatment of cancer) and for the planning and evaluation of programmes for cancer control.1, 2 Several agencies have published statistics on cancer mortality and incidence in the countries of Europe (the EUROSTAT and WHO, for example3, 4). The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), through its programme of collaboration with the cancer registries of Europe in the European Network of Cancer Registries (ENCR) has done so since 1980.5, 6, 7
In the provision of observed incidence and mortality rates, there is an inherent delay between the moment when the event occurs and the time when it becomes available for annual reporting. However, for purposes of planning public health policies, it is important to know the most up-to-date cancer burden in absolute terms. Statistical models, based on the most recently observed data available and subjected to certain assumptions may be used to overcome the lack of current figures.
In this paper, we provide estimates of the incidence of and mortality from 25 cancers in forty European countries in 2008, using the most recent data published in international studies coordinated by the IARC, statistics published by national cancer registries on the Internet and the WHO mortality database.8 Since, at the time of writing, no countries had completed processing and publishing rates of cancer incidence and mortality for 2008 (except France9), we generated short-term predictions whenever possible. Additional estimation was required where national incidence data were not available, by using incidence and mortality data from local (sub-national) cancer registries in the same country.
The results are presented for the 27 countries of the European Union, the European Economic Area (EEA) plus Switzerland, for four areas of Europe as defined by the UN (Central and Eastern, Northern, Southern and Western)10 and for the whole of Europe. Here we present a summary of the results; the complete set of estimates by sex, age-group, cancer and country will be made available at the ECO web site11 and in the forthcoming update of GLOBOCAN12 for the year 2008.
Section snippets
Data sources and methods
Estimates of cancer incidence and mortality for 2008 are made for each of the thirty-nine European countries (as defined by the United Nations10), and Cyprus. The source of the incidence and mortality data together with a summary of the methods of estimation are shown in Table 1. Results are presented for the following cancer sites defined by the 10th edition of the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-10)13: oral cavity and pharynx (ICD-10 C00–14), oesophagus (C15), stomach (C16),
Results
Table 2 and Fig. 2 summarise the estimated numbers of cases and deaths in Europe in 2008 (in thousands), by type of cancer.
There were an estimated 3.2 million cancer (excluding non-melanoma skin cancers) cases diagnosed, 53% (1.7 million) occurring in men and 47% (1.5 million) in women. The most common forms of cancers were colorectal cancers (436,000 cases, 13.6% of all cancer cases), followed by breast cancer (421,000, 13.1%), lung cancer (391,000, 12.2%) and prostate cancer (382,000, 11.9%).
Discussion
Short term prediction methods have been used to prepare estimates of incidence and mortality in 2008 from the most recently available data – specifically, national mortality rates for the years 2004–2007, and national incidence rates for 2002–2007, depending on the country. Although predictions are based on trends in historical data which may not continue into the future, they will be accurate when the disease rates show clear stable trend (incidence and mortality from stomach cancer for
Conflict of interest statement
None declared.
Acknowledgements
This work was conducted in the framework of the European Cancer Observatory (ECO), a project of the International Agency for Research on Cancer, funded by the Cancéropôle Lyon Auvergne Rhône-Alpes (CLARA) and by the Directorate General for Health and Consumers of the European Commission.
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