International Trends in Colorectal Cancer Incidence Rates

Previous studies have documented significant variations in colorectal cancer incidence rates and trends regionally and across countries. However, no study has examined the worldwide pattern using the most recently updated incidence data from the IARC.

We obtained sex-specific colorectal cancer incidence for 1953-57 through 1998-2002 by cancer registry from Cancer Incidence in Five Continents (CI5) databases. For 51 cancer registries with long-term incidence data, we assessed the change in the incidence rates over the past 20 years by calculating the ratio of the incidence rates in 1998-2002 to that in 1983-87.