Elsevier

European Journal of Cancer

Volume 103, November 2018, Pages 356-387
European Journal of Cancer

Review
Cancer incidence and mortality patterns in Europe: Estimates for 40 countries and 25 major cancers in 2018

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ejca.2018.07.005 Get rights and content

Highlights

  • There were an estimated 3.9 million new cases of cancer and 1.9 million deaths from cancer in Europe in 2018.

  • The most common cancer sites were cancers of the female breast, followed by colorectal, lung and prostate cancer.

  • The most common causes of death from cancer were cancers of the lung, colorectal, breast and pancreatic cancer.

  • These estimates of the cancer burden in Europe provide a basis for establishing priorities for cancer control actions across Europe.

Abstract

Introduction

Europe contains 9% of the world population but has a 25% share of the global cancer burden. Up-to-date cancer statistics in Europe are key to cancer planning. Cancer incidence and mortality estimates for 25 major cancers are presented for the 40 countries in the four United Nations-defined areas of Europe and for Europe and the European Union (EU-28) for 2018.

Methods

Estimates of national incidence and mortality rates for 2018 were based on statistical models applied to the most recently published data, with predictions obtained from recent trends, where possible. The estimated rates in 2018 were applied to the 2018 population estimates to obtain the estimated numbers of new cancer cases and deaths in Europe in 2018.

Results

There were an estimated 3.91 million new cases of cancer (excluding non-melanoma skin cancer) and 1.93 million deaths from cancer in Europe in 2018. The most common cancer sites were cancers of the female breast (523,000 cases), followed by colorectal (500,000), lung (470,000) and prostate cancer (450,000). These four cancers represent half of the overall burden of cancer in Europe. The most common causes of death from cancer were cancers of the lung (388,000 deaths), colorectal (243,000), breast (138,000) and pancreatic cancer (128,000). In the EU-28, the estimated number of new cases of cancer was approximately 1.6 million in males and 1.4 million in females, with 790,000 men and 620,000 women dying from the disease in the same year.

Conclusion

The present estimates of the cancer burden in Europe alongside a description of the profiles of common cancers at the national and regional level provide a basis for establishing priorities for cancer control actions across Europe. The estimates presented here are based on the recorded data from 145 population-based cancer registries in Europe. Their long established role in planning and evaluating national cancer plans on the continent should not be undervalued.

Introduction

Till date, cancer incidence and mortality data in Europe are a key resource in both planning and assessing the impact of cancer control programmes at the country and regional level. Europe carries a significant load of the global burden, with one-quarter of the estimated cancer cases in 2012 occurring on the continent despite a total population that comprises 9% of the world's population [1], [2].

Through its programmes of collaboration with population-based cancer registries in Europe, members of the European Network of Cancer Registries (ENCR, http://www.encr.eu/ ) have provided estimates of cancer burden at the European and EU member state level over the last 30 years [3], [4], [5], [6], [7], [8], [9]. In this article, a collaboration between the ENCR, their Secretariat housed at the European Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC) and the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), estimates of cancer incidence and mortality is provided for 25 most common sites in 40 European countries for the year 2018.

The reported estimates are mainly based on the incidence data provided by the European cancer registries for the Cancer Incidence in Five Continents Vol. XI (CI5-XI) project [10], the national mortality data available at the World Health Organisation (WHO) database [11] and the corresponding population estimates from the United Nation (UN) Population Division [2]. The results are also presented for the four European areas as defined in the UN geoscheme (e.g. Eastern, Northern, Southern and Western Europe) [2], Europe and the European Union 28 Member States (EU-28). The complete set of estimates for the 25 cancers, together with an additional breakdown by subsite is available through the European Cancer Information System web application (https://ecis.jrc.ec.europa.eu/ ).

Section snippets

Populations and cancer sites

Cancer incidence and mortality for the year 2018 by sex and 18 age groups (0–4, 5–9, …, 80–84, 85 and over) were estimated for each of the 39 European countries defined by the United Nations [2] and for Cyprus. Results are presented for the following cancer sites defined according to the 10th edition of the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-10, version 2010) [12]: lip, oral cavity and pharynx (ICD-10 C00-14), oesophagus (C15), stomach (C16), colorectal (including anus C18-21), liver

Results

Fig. 1 and Table 2 summarise the estimated numbers of new cancer cases and cancer deaths in Europe in 2018 (in thousands), by type of cancer and sex. There were just over 3.9 million new cases of cancer (excluding non-melanoma skin cancers) in Europe in 2018, 53% (2.05 million) occurring in men and 47% (1.85 million) in women. The most common cancer sites were female breast cancer (523,000 cases, 13.4% of all cancer cases), followed by colorectal cancer (500,000, 12.8%), lung cancer (470,000,

Discussion

We estimated 3.91 million new cases (excluding non-melanoma skin cancers) and 1.93 million deaths from cancer in Europe in 2018. In combination, cancers of the female breast, colorectal, prostate and lung represent almost half of the overall burden of cancer in Europe. The same diseases are also major causes of cancer death in Europe in 2018, with pancreatic cancer ranking 4th ahead of prostate cancer. This timely comparative analysis of the cancer burden in Europe also reveals the extent to

Conflict of interest statement

None declared.

Acknowledgements

The authors gratefully acknowledged the following cancer registries who contributed their data to enable the estimates produced in this study via submission to Cancer Incidence in Five Continents Volume XI: Austria: Austrian Cancer Registry; Belarus: Belarussian National Cancer Registry; Belgium: Belgian Cancer Registry; Bosnia and Herzegovina: Republika of Srpska Cancer Registry; Bulgaria: Bulgarian National Cancer Registry; Croatia: Croatian National Cancer Registry; Cyprus: Cyprus Cancer

References (38)

  • C. Héry et al.

    Quantification of changes in breast cancer incidence and mortality since 1990 in 35 countries with Caucasian-majority populations

    Ann Oncol

    (2008 Jun)
  • H.E. Karim-Kos et al.

    Recent trends of cancer in Europe: a combined approach of incidence, survival and mortality for 17 cancer sites since the 1990s

    Eur J Cancer

    (2008 Jul)
  • M. Arnold et al.

    Recent trends in incidence of five common cancers in 26 European countries since 1988: analysis of the European Cancer Observatory

    Eur J Cancer

    (2015 Jun)
  • F. Bray et al.

    Prostate cancer incidence and mortality trends in 37 European countries: an overview

    Eur J Cancer

    (2010 Nov)
  • J.W. Coebergh et al.

    EUROCOURSE lessons learned from and for population-based cancer registries in Europe and their programme owners: improving performance by research programming for public health and clinical evaluation

    Eur J Cancer

    (2015 Jun)
  • J. Ferlay et al.

    GLOBOCAN 2012 v1.0, cancer incidence and mortality worldwide: IARC CancerBase No. 11

    (2013)
  • United Nations, Population division. World Population Prospects, the 2017 revision. https://esa.un.org/unpd/wpp/....
  • O.M. Jensen et al.

    Cancer in the European Community and its member states

    Eur J Cancer

    (1990)
  • J. Ferlay et al.

    Cancer incidence and mortality in Europe, 2006

    Ann Oncol

    (2007)
  • Cited by (1779)

    View all citing articles on Scopus
    View full text