Cancer mortality in Switzerland, 1985–89

Abstract

The aim of this report is to update data and statistics on cancer mortality in Switzerland from 1950 to 1984 by sex, age group and calendar period 1. Aggregate death certification data for the five-year period 198589 are now presented. The materials and methods are similar to those previously utilized 1. Briefly, death certification numbers by cause and estimates of the resident population, stratified by sex and quinquennia of age, were abstracted from registries provided by the Swiss Federal Statistical Office. All cancers or groups of cancers, originally classified according to the standard International Classification of Diseases (ICD), Eighth Revision/, were grouped in the same 30 categories adopted for previous reports , besides total cancer mortality and a broad group including "other and unspecified". In particular, we grouped together all intestinal sites, melanomas and non-melanomatous skin neoplasms, all uterine neoplasms (cervix and corpus), all the neoplasms of the brain and nerves (benign and malignant), all leukaemias and nonHodgkin 's lymphomas 1. Eight standard tables were produced, providing the following information: 1) average annual crude, age-standardized death certification rates and standardized percentages of all cancer deaths for population at all ages and truncated rates for 35-64 years (Table 1 for males and 2 for females). Two different standards were used: i) the 1980 Swiss census population, corrected for census undercount and subdivided into 16 quinquennia of age from 0 4 to 75-79 plus 80 and over and ii) the World standard population, for purposes of comparison with other countries: 2) average annual age-specific death certification rates for each sex and quinquennium of age from 0 4 to 75-79 plus 80 and over (Table 3 for males and 4 for females); 3) total number of registered deaths in the period 1985-89 for each cancer or groups of cancer, sex and age group (Table 5 for males and 6 for females); 4) average annual percentages of all cancer deaths for each sex and age group (Table 7 for males and 8 for females). The names of cancer sites or groups of cancers considered, together with the corresponding ICD codes (8th Revision), are listed in Tables 1 and 2, while in Tables 3 -8 only the ICDs are reported. Age-standardized (1980 Swiss Census population) death certification rates for both sexes at all ages and truncated rates for 35-64 years have also been plotted for 8 calendar quinquennia from 1951 to 1989 (Figure 1). Swiss mortality rates for the period 1985-89 were projected using an age-period-cohort model 3. To test the reliability of that exercise, an appendix table contains projected and observed age-standardized mortality rates (40 to 79 years). Since this is a statistical technical report, the figures will not all be discussed at length, but a short comment is included with the aim of assisting in the interpretation of the data for major cancer sites, and to recall underlying long-term tendencies. Comparisons are specifically made with the previous five year calendar period 1980-841 . The reader interested in the details of the mortality, statistics for any particular cancer site will need to make a careful examination of the whole matrix of age-specific data.