More than 1.4 million people died of cancer in the EU this year: study

One study reveals that cancer death rates have declined over the last five years in the European Union, but that this disease is expected to kill more than 1.4 million people worldwide this year.

According to a study published Tuesday in the Annals of Oncology, cancer death rates among men have fallen from about 6% since 2014, to 139 deaths per 100,000 men, while rates among women have gone down. from 86 to 83, a decrease of 3.6%.

Researchers attribute this improvement to more effective screening and early diagnosis and treatment.

However, the total number of deaths is expected to increase 5% over 2014 to reach 1.4 million this year due to the aging of the European population and its growing size, the study notes. Of these, some 787,000 will be men and 621,900 women.

The most deadly cancers

The study shows that bad cancer is no longer the most lethal cancer in women. Instead, lung cancer has proven to be the most dangerous form of the disease for both bades with nearly 185,000 men and 97,000 women dying this year.

The researchers explain that the growing number of women's deaths from lung cancer is due to different changes in smoking habits over generations, with smoking becoming prevalent among women in the 1970s.

Lung cancer is followed by colorectal cancer and prostate cancer in men and bad cancer and colorectal cancer in women.

Breast cancer in decline

According to the study, the bad cancer death rate has decreased by almost 12% in the European Union over the past decade. In fact, 13.36 women out of 100,000 should succumb to the disease in 2019, compared to 16.44 women per 100,000 between 2005 and 2009.

"Because of the aging of the population, however, the absolute number of deaths has not decreased, so the medical and public health burden of bad cancer in Europe should not be reduced," he said. he.

The researchers found that six of the largest countries in the group now had an average of between 13 and 14 deaths per 100,000 women, but that Poland was the only one with a real mortality rate of 6.1 %.

Great Britain, meanwhile, recorded the fastest drop, its death rate falling by 17.7% over the last decade, while Spain remained the most populous country, bad cancer mortality rate to reach 10.4 per 100,000 women this year.