Incidence of cancer in Navarra in the year 1998

Abstract

This report brings the latest statistics available in the Cancer Register of Navarra on the incidence of cancer in this autonomous community in the year 1998. 3,018 incident cases of cancer were registered, 57.5% in men. Excluding nonmelanoma skin tumours, the crude incidence rate was 518 and 358 per 100,000 in men and women, and the rates adjusted to the world population were 296 and 199 per 100,000 respectively. 55.4% of all the cases of cancer diagnosed in men during 1998 occurred in the following sites: prostate, lung, colorectal, and bladder. In women breast, colorectal, body of uterus and stomach sites made up 53.6% of the cases. With respect to the five year period 1993-97, for the first time the adjusted incidence rate for all sites combined showed a decline of 1.1% amongst men, while amongst women the rising tendency was upheld. Notable were the decline of tumours related to smoking amongst men and of stomach cancer in both sexes. The data for women seem to indicate that some sites which traditionally showed extremely low rates in Navarra, tumours related to smoking and the cervix, have begun to increase in recent years, probably in relation to changes of life style. In both sexes there was an increase of non-Hodgkin’s lymphomas and, continuing the tendency begun in previous years, the rate of incidence of breast cancer in women and prostate cancer in men continued to increase. The decline in the incidence of some cancers, particularly for the sites related to smoking observed amongst men in Navarra, is a hopeful fact, which will need confirmation in coming years.