Do International Trends in Cancer Incidence and Mortality Reflect Expectations from Cancer Screening?

Chapter
First Online:
Part of the Statistics for Biology and Health book series (SBH, volume 79)

Abstract

The goal of cancer screening is to reduce the risk of cancer death by detecting cancers when they are not yet clinically apparent, at a stage they are less life threatening and more curable. An immediate consequence of this goal is that the ability of a cancer-screening test to reduce the risk of cancer death is tightly bound to its capacity to prevent the occurrence of advanced cancer. So, if screening for a specific cancer works, then reductions in mortality rates from that cancer should be preceded by reductions in the incidence rates of patients diagnosed with advanced stage. A growing body of data indicates that cancer screening when precursor lesions exist (e.g., cervical and colorectal cancers) succeeds in reducing incidence rates of advanced cancer, whereas cancer screening when no precursor lesion exists (e.g., breast cancer) hardly influences the incidence of advanced cancer. Hence, incidence rates of advanced cancer in populations where screening is widespread may inform on the effectiveness and public health relevance of cancer-screening methods.

Keywords

Prostate Cancer Cervical Cancer Advanced Cancer Advanced Breast Cancer Cervical Intraepithelial Neoplasia 
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
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Copyright information

© Springer Science+Business Media New York 2013

Authors and Affiliations

  1. 1.International Prevention Research Institute (iPRI)LyonFrance
  2. 2.Ecully (Lyon)France

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