The incidence and mortality of major cancers in China, 2012

Background: The National Central Cancer Registry (NCCR) collected population-based cancer registration data in 2012 from local registries and estimated the cancer incidence and mortality in China. Methods: In the middle of 2015, 261 cancer registries submitted reports on new cancer cases and deaths occurred in 2012. Qualiifed data from 193 registries were used for analysis after evaluation. Crude rates, number of cases, and age-standardized rates stratiifed by area (urban/rural), sex, age group, and cancer type were calculated according to the national population in 2012. Results: The covered population were 198,060,406 from 193 qualiifed cancer registries (74 urban and 119 rural reg-istries). The major indicators of quality control, percentage of cases morphologically veriifed (MV%), death certiifcate-only cases (DCO%), and the mortality to incidence (M/I) ratio, were 69.13%, 2.38%, and 0.62, respectively. It was esti-mated that there were 3,586,200 new cancer cases and 2,186,600 cancer deaths in 2012 in China with an incidence of 264.85/100,000 age-standardized rate of incidence by the Chinese standard population (ASRIC) of 191.89/100,000] and a mortality of 161.49/100,000 age-standardized rate of mortality by the Chinese standard population (ASRMC) of 112.34/100,000]. The ten most common cancer sites were the lung, stomach, liver, colorectum, esophagus, female breast, thyroid, cervix, brain, and pancreas, accounting for approximately 77.4%of all new cancer cases. The ten lead-ing causes of cancer death were lung cancer, liver cancer, gastric cancer, esophageal cancer, colorectal cancer, pancre-atic cancer, female breast cancer, brain tumor, leukemia, and lymphoma, accounting for 84.5%of all cancer deaths. Conclusions: Continuous cancer registry data provides basic information in cancer control programs. The cancer burden in China is gradually increasing, both in urban and rural areas, in males and females. Effcient cancer preven-tion and control, such as health education, tobacco control, and cancer screening, should be paid attention by the health sector and the whole society of China.