Cancer risk rises for Dutch women

11 October 2005

AMSTERDAM — The chance of women contracting cancer is rising while the risk for men has decreased in recent years, according to a report published on Tuesday.

The report was published to mark the 15th anniversary of the founding of the Dutch cancer register, Nederlandse Kankerregistratie.

Data has been gathered by cancer centres in the Netherlands on more than one million cases of the disease or the early stages of the condition. The number of new cancer cases reported every year rose from 56,000 in 1989 to 74,500 in 2005.

About 38,500 died this year as a result of cancer; this amounts to 30 percent of all deaths in the Netherlands in 2005. The only bigger killer was heart and vascular disease (40 percent). If account is taken of the ageing of the population, the total annual death toll from cancer is slowly declining – particularly for men.

The number of new cancer cases is rising on average by 1,000 cases a year, due mainly due to the growth in population of elderly people. When the figures are corrected to take account of this ageing, the chance of women getting cancer is increasing and the risk for men is declining.

On average four out of 10 men and 3.5 out of 10 women contract cancer during their lifetime in the Netherlands.

Some forms of cancer are becoming increasingly prevalent. This applies to breast cancer, esophageal cancer, skin cancer and prostate cancer. The number of men with prostate cancer has doubled since 1989 to 7,900 in 2003. Women are increasingly suffering from long cancer, while this condition is decreasing among men.

Subject: Dutch news