Epidemiology of cancer: global patterns and trends.

This paper presents recent estimates of the global cancer burden, in terms of the number of new cancer cases, and incidence rates, ignoring other measures such as mortality, prevalence and years of life lost. For four major cancers, information on temporal trends is reviewed, at least for those parts of the world where adequate data are available. Finally, there is a brief examination of the factors underlying the geographic patterns and trends, with an attempt at quantitation, and some forecasting of the likely evolution of the cancer burden at the global level.