Estimation of cancer morbidity using mortality data.

Data on the incidence and prevalence of diseases provide an essential basis for several sanitary and epidemiologic purposes. Unfortunately, official routine statistics provide little, if any, reliable information on incidence and prevalence. The estimation of such indexes on the basis of other indirect statistics, such as mortality, can therefore be of great use. A mathematical model for degenerative diseases in a stationary population was applied to cancers occurring in the Varese province of Italy where comparative morbidity data were available from the Lombardy Cancer Register. A very good agreement between estimated and observed incidence rates was found for some cancers such as stomach and lung cancer. The agreement obtained in these cases suggests that model hypotheses may be usefully adopted. This conclusion can probably be extrapolated to the general population of Italy or other Italian areas characterized by a population structure which is similarly stationary.