[Ten year trend of cancer incidence in Seoul, Korea: 1993--2002].

OBJECTIVES: Effective cancer prevention and control measures can only be done when dependable data on the cancer incidence is available. The Seoul Cancer Registry (SCR) was founded to provide valid, comparable and representative cancer incidence data for Koreans. We aimed to compare the cancer incidence in the first (1993--1997) and second term (1998--2002) of the SCR, and we analyzed the annual incidence trend during that 10 years.

METHODS: The SCR detects potential cancer cases through the Korean Central Cancer Registry (KCCR) data, the health insurance claims, the individual hospital's discharge records and the death certificates. About 87% of the SCR data is registered through the KCCR. The rest of the data is registered by SCR registrars who visit about 70-80 mid-sized hospitals in Seoul to review and abstract the medical records of the potential cancer patients.

RESULTS: The total number of new cancer cases was higher in 1998--2002 than in 1993--1997 by 20.6% for men and 18.4% for women, respectively. The age-standardized rate (ASR) of total cancer per 100,000 increased 1% (from 295.4 to 298.3) for men and 5.1% (from 181.5 to 190.7) for women, between the two periods. The commonest cancer sites during 1998--2002 for men were stomach, liver, bronchus/lung, colorectum, bladder and prostate, and the commonest cancer sites for women were breast, stomach, colorectum, cervix uteri, thyroid and bronchus/lung. Compared with the ASRs in 1993, the ASRs in 2002 increased for colorectum (58.4% for men, 27.1% for women), prostate (81.5%), breast (58.3% for women), thyroid (141% for women), and bronchus/lung (15.4% for women). The ASRs for stomach (-18.7% for men, -20.7% for women) and uterine cervix cancer (-39.7%) had decreased.

CONCLUSIONS: The cancer incidence is increasing in Seoul, Korea, especially for the colorectum and prostate for men, and for the breast, colorectum, bronchus/lung and thyroid for women.