Cancer mortality in Europe, 1990–1994, and an overview of trends from 1955 to 1994

Abstract

Mortality data, abstracted from the WHO database, are presented in tabular form for 26 cancer sites or groups of sites, plus total cancer mortality, in 35 European countries during the period 1990–1994. Trends in mortality are also given in graphical form for 24 major countries over the period 1955–1994. In most western European countries total cancer mortality was—for the first time—moderately downwards in the early 1990s. Such favourable trends included some decline in lung cancer mortality for males, the persistent decline in stomach cancer for both sexes, and of cervical cancer for women, as well as some decline in breast and colorectal cancers, plus other neoplasms (testis, lymphoid neoplasms), whose treatment has further improved over the last few years. However, cancer mortality was still upwards in a few southern and eastern European countries, including Hungary and Poland, where total cancer mortality rates in middle-aged males are now the highest ever registered in Europe. The favourable trends in western Europe over the recent years are similar to those observed in the U.S.A.