Cancer mortality, leading causes

Cancer is the second leading cause of death in the United States, and cancers of the lung and bronchus rank first in mortality,... 

Though still the second leading cause of cancer death, mortality rates for colon cancer have declined over the last 30 years as a result of better and increasingly used screening programs and more effective and better tolerated treatments. 

Colorectal cancer is the third most common cancer and the second leading cause of cancer-related deaths in the United States. (77). The incidence is approx. 40 per 100,000 in men and 25-30 per 100,000 in women (78). For those with stage 111 disease with presumed micrometastatic disease, adjuvant chemotherapy is used, typically 5-fluorouracil (5-FU) and leucovorin for 6-8 mo, with a 30% reduction in disease recurrence and 22-32% reduction in mortality (79,80). 

In the past half a century, scientists and public health officials have gradually come to realize that the two leading causes of mortality in Western nations, heart disease and cancer, are associated to a certain though unknown extent with life style, including dietary factors. This association is somewhat better established for coronary artery disease than it is for cancer. Based on current knowledge, many organizations have offered dietary advice to the public (1-9). However, the scientific community has reached no clear consensus about the nature of the association between diet and chronic diseases and the extent to which dietary modification can decrease the risk, especially cancer risk (5 6 10 U). 

Although estrogen replacement therapy at menopause can prevent bone loss and cardiovascular disease, there is evidence that estrogens are associated with an increased risk of breast cancer as well as endometrial cancer(Gambrell, 1994), which thus seriously limits the use of estrogen replacement therapy. The ideal compound for women s health should be one able to decrease the risk of the most important causes of morbidity and mortality in women, namely breast cancer, uterine cancer, osteoporosis, bone fractures, and cardiovascular disease. Heart disease is, in fact, the leading cause of death in postmenopausal women (Lerner and Kannel, 1986). This ideal compound should also have an excellent safety profile to ensure compliance over 20 to 40 years of a woman s life. 

Cancer is a major cause of death throughout the world, and in the developed world, it is generally exceeded only by cardiovascular disease. Cancer of the large bowel, which is the fourth most common cancer in the world, is one of the leading causes of cancer death in both men and women in Western countries, including the U.S. where about 150,000 new cases of this cancer and about 56,000 related deaths were estimated in 2002. Marked international differences in the incidence and mortality of colon cancer and increase of risk in populations migrating from low- to high-risk... 

There is no question that alcohol abuse contributes significantly to liver-related morbidity and mortality in the United States. Long-term alcohol use is the leading cause of illness and death from liver disease. There are three phases of alcohol-induced liver damage, alcoholic fatty liver, which is usually reversible with abstinence alcoholic hepatitis or inflammation and alcoholic cirrhosis or scarring of the liver. Patients with both alcoholic cirrhosis and hepatitis have a death rate of more than 60% over a 4-year period. The prognosis is bleaker than the outlook for many types of cancers. As many as 900 000 people in the United States suffer from cirrhosis and some 26 000 of these die each year. The risk for liver disease is related to how much a person drinks the risk is low at levels of alcohol consumption but steeply increases with higher levels of consumption. Because effects of alcohol are dose-related and because of the steepness at which the adverse effects are... 

Interpretation of cohort studies is not always straightforward there are a number of selection effects and biases that must be considered. Cohort studies routinely report that the mortality of active workers is less than that of the population as a whole. It is not an unexpected finding since workers usually have to undergo some sort of selection process to become or remain workers. Nevertheless, this selection effect, known as the healthy worker effect, can lead to considerable arguments over the interpretation of study results, particularly if the cancer mortality is as expected but the all-cause mortality is much lower than expected. However, even an experimental science such as toxicology is not without a similar problem of interpretation, namely, the problem of distinguishing between the effects of age and treatment on tumor incidence. 

COPD is the fourth leading cause of death in the United States, exceeded only by cancer, heart disease, and cerebrovascular accidents. In 2000, over 119,000 deaths in the United States and 2.74 million deaths worldwide were attributed to COPD. It is the only leading cause of death to increase over the last 30 years and is projected to be the third leading cause by 2020. Overall, the mortality rate is higher in males however, the female death rate has doubled over the last 25 years, and the number of female deaths exceeded male deaths in 2000. The mortality rate is higher in whites compared with blacks. ... 

For both adult men and women, colorectal cancer is the third leading cause of cancer-related deaths in the United States. An estimated 56,290 deaths will occur during 2005. Overall, the mortality and incidence associated with colorectal cancer has decreased during the past 30 years. Mortality rates associated with colorectal cancer in the United States are comparable to those of other industrialized areas around the world. ... 

Cancer is the leading cause of death worldwide (WHO 2008) and the second leading cause of death in the United States (Kung et al. 2008). There were 7.9 million deaths and 11.3 million new cases of cancer worldwide in 2007 with the number of cases expected to increase over the next 20 years (WHO 2008). Lung, liver, stomach, colon, and breast cancer are the five leading global causes of cancer mortality. The World Health Organization (WHO) has estimated that 40% of cancer deaths worldwide are preventable (WHO 2008). 

FIGURE 1.4 Age-adjusted mortality rates over time of the leading causes of cancer deaths in men. 

Gastric adenocarcinoma is one of the leading causes of cancer morbidity and mortality worldwide. Gastric cancer comprises approximately 95% of all gastric tumors, and is the focus of this chapter. Other less common gastric tumors not discussed here include mucosa-associated lymphoid tissue (MALT) lymphoma, gastrointestinal stromal cell tumors, and carcinoid tumors. 

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