Is brain cancer mortality increasing in industrial countries?

This paper analyzes recent age-specific trends in brain and other central nervous system cancer mortality from 1968 to 1986-1987 in the United States, United Kingdom, Italy, France, and West Germany. It also examines changes in the use of diagnostic confirmation technology in the U.S. SEER program from 1973 to 1987 to estimate the influence of such factors on recent mortality trends. Other sources of error have not been evaluated in this paper. In the United States and Sweden, deaths due to brain and other central nervous system cancer, adjusted to the overall population, are unchanging. However, age-specific analyses of brain and other nervous system cancer in six major industrial countries show markedly different trends at different age groups, with drastic increases in brain tumor rates in the old: rates doubled in persons ages 75 to 84. In the United States, microscopic or radiographic confirmation occurred throughout this time period in 96% of all incident cases of brain and other central nervous system cancers diagnosed before death in the SEER program, with older persons receiving consistently more radiographic tests than younger persons. The use of diagnostic technology may change over time and across populations, but it is not known to what extent it accounts for these increasing trends, which require careful additional study.