Background: Complete cancer prevalence data in Europe have never been updated after the first estimates provided by the EUROPREVAL project and referred to the year 1993. This paper provides prevalence estimates for 16 majorcancers in Europe at the beginning of the year 2003.Patients and methods: We estimated complete prevalence by the completeness index method. We usedinformation on cancer patients diagnosed in 1978-2002 with vital status information available up to 31December 2003, from 76 European cancer registries.Results: About 11.6 millions of Europeans with a history of one of the major considered cancers were alive on1 January 2003. For breast and prostate cancers, about 1 out of 73 women and 1 out of 160 men were living with aprevious diagnosis of breast and prostate cancers, respectively. The demographic variations alone will increase thenumber of prevalent cases to nearly 13 millions in 2010.Conclusions: Several factors (early detection, population aging and better treatment) contribute to increase cancerprevalence and push for the need of a continuous monitoring of prevalence indicators to properly plan needs, resourceallocation to cancer and for improving health care programs for cancer survivors. Cancer prevalence should beincluded within the EU official health statistics.
Cancer prevalence estimates in Europe at the beginning of 2000
VERCELLI, MARINA
2013-01-01
Abstract
Background: Complete cancer prevalence data in Europe have never been updated after the first estimates provided by the EUROPREVAL project and referred to the year 1993. This paper provides prevalence estimates for 16 majorcancers in Europe at the beginning of the year 2003.Patients and methods: We estimated complete prevalence by the completeness index method. We usedinformation on cancer patients diagnosed in 1978-2002 with vital status information available up to 31December 2003, from 76 European cancer registries.Results: About 11.6 millions of Europeans with a history of one of the major considered cancers were alive on1 January 2003. For breast and prostate cancers, about 1 out of 73 women and 1 out of 160 men were living with aprevious diagnosis of breast and prostate cancers, respectively. The demographic variations alone will increase thenumber of prevalent cases to nearly 13 millions in 2010.Conclusions: Several factors (early detection, population aging and better treatment) contribute to increase cancerprevalence and push for the need of a continuous monitoring of prevalence indicators to properly plan needs, resourceallocation to cancer and for improving health care programs for cancer survivors. Cancer prevalence should beincluded within the EU official health statistics.
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