Cancer
One in three people develop cancer during their lives
Incidence of the major cancers, 2007, England
Incidence
The four most common cancers – breast, lung, colorectal and prostate – accounted for more than half of the 245,300 new cases of malignant cancer (excluding non-melanoma skin cancer) registered in England in 2007. Of the total number of new cases, 123,100 were in males and 122,200 in females. Breast cancer accounted for 31 per cent of cases among women and prostate cancer for 25 per cent among men.
Cancer is predominantly a disease of older people – only 0.5 per cent of cases registered in 2007 were in children (aged under 15) and 25 per cent were in people aged under 60.
Between 1971 and 2007, the age-standardised incidence of cancer increased by around 21 per cent in males and 45 per cent in females.
Mortality
Over one in four people die from cancer. Cancer accounted for 30 per cent of all deaths in males and 25 per cent in females.
The four most common cancers accounted for nearly half of the 127,800 deaths from cancer (including non-melanoma skin cancer) in England in 2007. Of these, 66,500 of the total were in males and 61,200 in females.
Survival
Survival varies by type of cancer and, for each cancer, by a number of factors including sex, age and socio-economic status.
Five-year relative survival is very low (in the range 3–16 per cent) for cancers of the pancreas, lung, oesophagus, stomach and brain for patients diagnosed in England in 2001–06, compared with ovarian cancer (39 per cent), cancers of the bladder, colon and cervix (47–64 per cent), and cancers of the prostate and breast (77–82 per cent).
For the majority of cancers, a higher proportion of women than men survived for at least five years after diagnosis. Among adults, the younger the age at diagnosis, the higher the survival for almost every cancer. Five-year survival rates for patients diagnosed in England in 2001–06 improved slightly or stayed stable for 16 of the 21 most common cancers compared to the period 2000–04.
Notes: Detailed results for incidence and mortality have been published in the MB1 and DR_07 series, respectively (see ‘links’).
Age-standardised rates allow comparisons between areas or over time where populations have different age structures. The method used here is direct standardisation using the European standard population (see the ‘Cancer Trends’ book, Appendix H, for details).
The registration of non-melanoma skin cancer has varied widely across the cancer registries, depending on both their degree of access to out-patient records and GPs, and their policies and practices on the registration of multiple tumours in one patient. The incidence figures for ‘all malignancies’ therefore exclude non-melanoma skin cancer.
Relative survival estimates survival from the cancer concerned by taking into account mortality from other causes in the general population (of the same age and sex).
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Cancer Registration Statistics, England