Cancer now the biggest killer

By STAFF REPORTER

Cancer has overtaken heart disease as the leading cause of death for New Zealand men and women, says the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons.

New Zealand's cancer death rate is the third highest in the world, and the surgeons expect it to soar.

Cancer cases are expected to increase by 40 per cent in 2005, compared with 1994. A 27 per cent increase in deaths from the disease is predicted for this period.

The International Agency for Research on Cancer says world cancer deaths will total 10 million by 2020, compared with six million last year.

This is because people are expected to live longer and to be diagnosed with cancer in old age.

Among newly diagnosed cancers, the most common were lung (1.2 million people), breast (1.05 million), bowel (945,000), stomach (876,000) and liver (564,000).

The research, by the agency's Dr Maxwell Parkin, appeared in the Lancet Oncology journal.

Dr Parkin, an epidemiologist, says most breast cancer is due to lifestyle and environment.

The rate is high in all developed countries, except Japan, and low in African and Asian nations - but increasing.

Lung cancer trends are linked to the maturity of the smoking epidemic and reflect levels of smoking 30 years ago. Cigarette smoking was taken up earlier in Western Europe and the US than in Eastern Europe.

It is now rising quickly in the developing world, heralding devastation.

* The state of cancer care in New Zealand will be a key issue at the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons' annual meeting, starting in Palmerston North today.

The focus will be on advances in the treatment of breast, prostate, colo-rectal and vascular cancers, as well as skin cancer.