Abstract
Cancer has become an epidemic disease. Nearly ten million new cancer cases are diagnosed annually in the world and out of these about half are from the developing world. To appropriately plan for treatment, management and prevention of the disease, it becomes necessary to study the trends about morbidity caused by cancers. Data for patients diagnosed with any form of gastrointestinal (GI) cancers was extracted from records maintained in the outpatient department registers of the Oncology Department of Government Medical College and Hospital in Chandigarh from 1999 to 2012. Trends were analysed for different categories of GI cancers for the period of 12 years. In present study GI cancers accounted for 23 % of all registered cases (n-9603) of carcinomas. Males predominated for all GI cancers except in the gall bladder. Gastrointestinal cancers as a proportion of total cancers increased from 21% in 1999 to 25.9% in 2012 with a significant increasing trend in our series (χ2 for linear trend=9.36, p<0.003). Cancers of the tonsil, oral cavity and pharynx taken together showed an increasing trend over the years (χ2 for trend=55.2, p<0.001) whereas cancers of the lower GI (χ2=19.6, p<0.0001) and gall bladder (χ2=19.5, p<0.0001) showed a declining trend in our series. GI cancers form a significant proportion of all cancers reporting to our data. In depth studies to ascertain the reasons for the changing trends are required to design intervention programs. Further information is necessary from cancer registries and from the hospital records of oncology departments.
Highlights
Cancer (Kark-Roga) is known to have existed since prehistoric times and traces of cancer have been found in the bones of Egyptian Mummies embalmed 5000 years ago
Gastrointestinal cancers as a proportion of total cancers increased from 21% in 1999 to 25.9% in 2012 with a significant increasing trend in our series (χ2 for linear trend=9.36, p
Gastrointestinal cancers as a proportion of total cancers have increased from 21% in 1999 to 25.9% in 2012 with a significant increasing trend in our series (χ2 for linear trend=9.36, p
Summary
Cancer (Kark-Roga) is known to have existed since prehistoric times and traces of cancer have been found in the bones of Egyptian Mummies embalmed 5000 years ago. Ten million new cancer cases are diagnosed annually in the world and out of these about half cases are from developing world only. The most commonly diagnosed cancers worldwide in 2012 were those of lung (1.8 million, 13.0% of total), breast (1.7 million, 11.9%), and colorectal (1.4 million, 9.7%). Observed cancers in Indian population are of breast, lung, colon, rectum, stomach and liver (Rao et al, 1998; ICMR, 2000; Murthy et al, 2004). These compiled data show that in 2004, the number of male, female and the total cancer patients were 390809, 428545 and 819354 respectively which increased to 462408, 517378 and 979786, respectively by 2010 (Ali et al, 2010). Further information is necessary from cancer registries and from the hospital records of oncology departments
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