Colorectal Cancer Incidence in Korea Is Not the Highest in the World

Article information

Cancer Res Treat. 2016;48(2):864-867

Publication date (electronic) : 2016 January 28

doi : https://doi.org/10.4143/crt.2015.484

Aesun Shin, MD, PhD ¹^,², Kyu-Won Jung, MS ³, Hyeongtaek Woo, MD ¹, Seung-Yong Jeong, MD, PhD ²^,⁴

¹Department of Preventive Medicine, Seoul National University College of Medicine, Seoul, Korea

²Cancer Research Institute, Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea

³The Korea Central Cancer Registry, National Cancer Center, Goyang, Korea

⁴Department of Surgery, Seoul National University College of Medicine, Seoul, Korea

Correspondence: Aesun Shin, MD, PhD Department of Preventive Medicine, Seoul National University College of Medicine, 101 Daehak-ro, Jongno-gu, Seoul 03080, Korea Tel: 82-2-740-8331, Fax: 82-2-747-4830, E-mail: shinaesun@snu.ac.kr

Received 2015 December 14; Accepted 2016 January 10.

Recently, media as well as academic societies have referred to GLOBOCAN 2012 to support the high incidence rate of colorectal cancer in Korea. According to GLOBOCAN 2012, colorectal cancer incidence ranked third for men and fifth for women, and the highest when both sexes were combined among 184 countries (Table 1) [1]. Because GLOBOCAN intended to provide the most recent estimates of cancer incidence, mortality, and prevalence for 28 cancers worldwide, the quality of country estimates varied from high quality national or regional data to no data [1]. Therefore, the accuracy of estimates are dependent on the availability and the accuracy of the data from each country [1]. Korean data is high quality national data with rates projected to 2012. The most recent incidence data used for GLOBOCAN estimates was for the year 2009 [2]. Indeed, the age-standardized incidence of colorectal cancer increased by 5.3% annually between 1999 and 2012 [3]. However, according to the Korea Central Cancer Registry data, the colorectal cancer incidence decreased for men and stabilized for women in 2012 [3]. Since projection used for GLOBOCAN 2012 applied trends until 2009, which was an annual percent change of 6.2% for both sexes [4], the GLOBOCAN estimates overestimated the incidence for the Korean population.

Table 1.

Estimated incidence of colorectal cancer, GLOBOCAN 2012 [1]

We retrieved published incidence data of selected countries from 2008 to 2012 (or nearest year to 2012) (Table 2). In comparison of age-standardized incidence rates, Czech (2011), Slovakia (2008), and Slovenia (2011) showed higher incidence than Korea (2011 or 2012) in men. In women, most countries with recent data showed higher incidence compared to Korea. When both sexes were combined, incidence of Japan (2010), Netherlands (2012), Australia (2012), and New Zealand (2012) was higher than that of Korea.

Table 2.

Observed age-standardized incidence rates^a) of colorectal cancer from selected cancer registries

In conclusion, the aim of GLOBOCAN 2012 is to provide worldwide estimates for cancer burden, and there are substantial differences between GLOBOCAN estimates and observed statistics due to methodology applied. Korea has experienced rapid transition in colorectal cancer epidemiology, therefore predicted estimates using past trends may not appropriately reflect the observed statistics. Although GLOBOCAN is useful for overviewing cancer burden, caution should be used in direct comparison or referring of the estimated incidence or mortality.

Notes

Conflict of interest relevant to this article was not reported.

References

1. GLOBOCAN 2012: estimated cancer incidence, mortality and prevalence worldwide in 2012 [Internet] Lyon: International Agency for Research on Cancer; 2015. [cited 2015 Dec 9]. Available from: http://globocan.iarc.fr/Default.aspx.

2. GLOBOCAN 2012: estimated cancer incidence, mortality and prevalence worldwide in 2012. Data Sources and Methods [Internet] Lyon: International Agency for Research on Cancer; 2015. [cited 2015 Dec 9]. Available from: http://globocan.iarc.fr/old/method/method.asp?country=410.

3. Jung KW, Won YJ, Kong HJ, Oh CM, Cho H, Lee DH, et al. Cancer statistics in Korea: incidence, mortality, survival, and prevalence in 2012. Cancer Res Treat 2015;47:127–41.

4. Jung KW, Park S, Kong HJ, Won YJ, Lee JY, Seo HG, et al. Cancer statistics in Korea: incidence, mortality, survival, and prevalence in 2009. Cancer Res Treat 2012;44:11–24.

5. National Cancer Center [Internet] Goyang: National Cancer Center; 2015. [cited 2015 Dec 1]. Available from: http://www.ncc.re.kr/cancerStatsList.ncc?searchKey=total&searchValue=&pageNum=1.

6. Ganjoho.jp [Internet] Tokyo: National Cancer Center; 2015. [cited 2015 Dec 9]. Available from: http://ganjoho.jp/reg_stat/statistics/dl/index.html.

7. National Registry of Diseases Office [Internet] Singapore: National Registry of Diseases Office; 2015. [cited 2015 Dec 9]. Available from: https://www.nrdo.gov.sg/publications/cancer?AspxAutoDetectCookieSupport=1.

8. Cancer incidence in Canada [Internet] Statistics Canada; 2015. [cited 2015 Dec 9]. Available from: http://www.statcan.gc.ca/daily-quotidien/151023/dq151023b-eng.htm.

9. National Cancer Institute. Fast Stats [Internet]. Bethesda, MD: National Cancer Institute; 2015. [cited 2015 Dec 1]. Available from: http://seer.cancer.gov/faststats.

10. Cancer incidence in Belgium 2008 [Internet] Brussels: Belgian Cancer Registry; 2011. [cited 2015 Dec 9]. Available from: http://www.kankerregister.org/media/docs/StK_publicatie.pdf.

11. Croatian Institute of Public Health [Internet] Zagreb: Croatian Institute of Public Health; 2015. [cited 2015 Dec 9]. Available from: http://www.hzjz.hr/sluzbe/sluzba-za-epidemiologiju/odjel-za-nadzor-i-istrazivanje-ne-zaraznih-bolesti/odsjek-za-zlocudne-bolesti-s-registrom-za-rak/.

12. Cancer incidence [Internet] Praha: Institute of Health Information and Statistics of the Czech Republic; 2011. [cited 2015 Dec 9]. Available from: http://www.uzis.cz/en/catalogue/cancer-incidence.

13. The NORDCAN project [Internet] Association of the Nordic Cancer Registries; 2009. [cited 2015 Dec 9]. Available from: http://www-dep.iarc.fr/NORDCAN/english/frame.asp.

14. Ministry of Health Israel. Rectal cancer [Internet]. Jerusalem: Ministry of Health Israel; 2015. [cited 2015 Dec 9]. Available from: http://www.health.gov.il/UnitsOffice/HD/ICDC/ICR/CancerIncidence/Pages/Rectum.aspx.

15. National Cancer Registry Ireland [Internet] Cork: National Cancer Registry Ireland; 2015. [cited 2015 Dec 9]. Available from: http://www.ncri.ie/data/incidence-statistics.

16. ITACAN: cancer in Italy, version 2.0 [Internet] Firenze: Italian Association of Cancer Registries; 2014. [cited 2015 Dec 9]. Available from: http://itacan.ispo.toscana.it/English/itacan.htm.

17. cijfers over kanker [Internet] Utrecht: Integraal Kankercentrum Nederland; 2015. [cited 2015 Dec 9]. Available from: http://www.cijfersoverkanker.nl/selecties/dataset_1/img563ffc67c14e1.

18. Cancer incidence in the Slovak Republic 2008 [Internet] Bratislava: National Cancer Registry of Slovakia; 2014. [cited 2015 Dec 9]. Available from: http://data.nczisk.sk/publikacie/analyticke/incidencia_zhubnych_nadorov_2008.pdf.

19. Generalitat Valenciana [Internet] Valencia: General Direction of Public Health; 2014. [cited 2015 Dec 9]. Available from: http://www.sp.san.gva.es/indexPortal.jsp?menuRaizPortal=SANMS50000&Portal=EPIDEMIOLOGIA&perfil=inst.

20. Australian Institute of Health and Welfare. Australian cancer incidence and mortality (ACIM) books [Internet]. Canberra: Australian Institute of Health and Welfare; 2015. [cited 2015 Dec 9]. Available from: http://www.aihw.gov.au/acim-books/.

21. Ministry of Health, ; New Zealand Goverment. Cancer: new registrations and deaths 2012 [Internet]. Wellington: Ministry of Health, New Zealand Government; 2015. [cited 2015 Dec 9]. Available from: http://www.health.govt.nz/publication/cancer-new-registrations-and-deaths-2012.

Article information Continued

This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Table 1.

Estimated incidence of colorectal cancer, GLOBOCAN 2012 [1]

Rank	Male				Female				Both sexes
Rank	Population	Cases	Crude rate (/100,000)	ASR (/100,000)	Population	Cases	Crude rate (/100,000)	ASR (/100,000)	Population	Cases	Crude rate (/100,000)	ASR (/100,000)
1	Slovakia	2,347	88.1	61.6	Norway	1,947	78.7	35.8	Korea	33,773	69.5	45.0
2	Hungary	4,751	100.5	58.9	Denmark	2,297	81.5	35.7	Slovakia	3,963	72.3	42.7
3	Korea	20,036	82.7	58.7	Netherlands	6,321	75.1	33.9	Hungary	8,442	84.8	42.3
4	Czech	4,978	95.9	54.0	New Zealand	1,463	64.5	33.5	Denmark	4,832	86.4	40.5
5	Slovenia	932	93.3	49.7	Korea	13,737	56.4	33.3	Netherlands	13,918	83.3	40.2
6	Netherlands	7,597	91.5	47.5	Australia	7,079	61.6	32.0	Czech	8,336	78.9	38.9
7	Denmark	2,535	91.4	45.9	Hungary	3,691	70.7	30.5	Norway	3,913	78.9	38.9
8	Australia	8,790	76.9	45.5	Israel	1,881	48.3	30.3	Australia	15,869	69.2	38.4
9	Belgium	4,797	90.7	45.2	Belgium	3,886	70.7	29.5	New Zealand	3,018	67.6	37.3
10	Croatia	1,803	85.4	44.2	Slovakia	1,616	57.4	29.3	Slovenia	1,621	79.5	37.0

ASR, age-standardized incidence rate using the World Standard Population (Segi, 1960).

Table 2.

Observed age-standardized incidence rates^a) of colorectal cancer from selected cancer registries

Registry	Coverage	ICD-10 code	Male					Female					Both sexes
Registry	Coverage	ICD-10 code	2008	2009	2010	2011	2012	2008	2009	2010	2011	2012	2008	2009	2010	2011	2012
Asia
Korea [5]	National	C18-20	45.9	49.0	48.6	51.4	50.0	24.7	25.9	25.3	26.4	26.8	34.1	36.2	35.9	37.8	37.3
Japan [6]	Regional^b)	C18-20	43.8	48.3	50.1	-	-	27.0	28.6	28.4	-	-	34.7	37.6	38.4	-	-
Singapore [7]	National	153-154^c)	38.2 (2010-2014)					26.7 (2010-2014)					-
America
Canada [8]	National	C18-20	42.3	41.4	39.1	39.5	38.8	28.0	27.8	27.4	27.4	27.5	34.8	34.2	32.9	33.1	32.8
USA [9]	Regional^d)		30.9 (2008-2012)					23.1 (2008-2012)					26.7 (2008-2012)
Europe
Belgium [10]	National	C18-20	44.8	-	-	-	-	28.8	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-
Croatia [11]	National	C18-20	-	-	-	41.2	42.4	-	-	-	21.0	23.0	-	-	-	29.6	31.2
Czech [12]	National	C18-21	56.5	55.5	55.5	51.8	-	28.9	28.7	28.2	28.5	-	-	-	-	-	-
Denmark [13]	National	C18-21	43.3	44.4	43.2	41.9	42.0	33.7	32.9	32.8	34.6	33.9	-	-	-	-	-
Israel^e) [14]	National	C18-20	44.1	38.8	36.2	35.1	33.6	32.9	28.5	29.2	27.2	25.1	-	-	-	-	-
Ireland [15]	National	C18-20	43.1	45.2	42.7	41.3	44.1	26.3	26.7	27.1	26.3	26.7	34.1	35.5	34.4	33.5	34.7
Italy [16]	Regional^f)	C18-21	42.8	40.7	-	-	-	27.5	25.5	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-
Netherlands [17]	National	C18-20	45.1	44.9	45.9	46.1	45.4	31.6	31.9	31.4	32.9	32.4	38.3	38.4	38.6	39.5	38.9
Norway [13]	National	C18-21	43.8	43.1	46.1	42.6	43.6	34.6	35.9	33.9	36.5	36.1	-	-	-	-	-
Slovakia [18]	National	C18-20	61.3	-	-	-	-	30.5	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-
Slovenia [7]	National	C18-20	47.9	53.1	57.2	54.6	-	27.0	26.8	30.0	28.2	-	-	-	-	-	-
Spain [19]	Regional^g)	C18-20	-	-	40.2	-	-	-	-	23.5	-	-	-	-	31.2	-	-
Oceania
Australia [20]	National	C18-20	52.6	50.9	52.4	50.9	-	36.9	35.5	36.2	36.2	-	44.4	42.8	43.9	43.2	-
New Zealand [21]	National	C18-21	50.0	49.9	49.8	52.4	49.1	39.8	39.6	41.3	37.5	38.6	44.5	44.5	45.3	44.6	43.5

ICD-10, International Classification of Diseases, 10th edition.

^a)

World Standard Population was used as a standard population,

^b)

Yamagata, Fukui, and Nagasaki,

^c)

ICD-9,

^d)

SEER 18 areas,

^e)

Jews,

^f)

AIRRUM (38 Registries pool),

^g)

Valencia.