Cancer will kill 1.3 million Europeans in 2011

A new study in the cancer journal Annals of Oncology predicts that cancer will kill 1.3 million Europeans in 2011.

The prediction comes from a mathematical model, which showed that overall, the cancer death rates for both men and women had been on the decline scine 2007 while the lung cancer rates had been on the rise.

Professor Carlo La Vecchia M.D. at the Mario Negri Institute and colleagues from other organizations based their estimates on data collected in 27 European countries between 1970 and 2007.

The researchers estimated that 721,252 men (153.9 per 100,000) and 560,184 women (90.7 per 100,000) will die from cancer, compared to 703,872 men (142.8 per 100,000) and 552,129 women (85.3 per 100,000) in 2007. That is, the absolute numbers of cancer deaths will increase slightly but the mortality rates will decrease.

One concern is that the number of women dying from lung cancer had been increasing in all member states but the UK where the mortality rates in women had remained highest for a decade  and had recently leveled off.

The mortality rate for lung cancer in European women had increased to 13.12 in 2011 from 11.55 per 100,000 of the female population in 2007.

By David Liu