In September 2018, the International Association of Cancer Registries (IACR) released the last version (currently) of the GLOBOCAN database, which contains estimates of cancer incidence and mortality worldwide for 36 different types of cancer and 185 countries.
The picture below shows the ranking of cancer as cause of death for people below 70-years-old in 2016.
In 2018, there have been estimated 18.1 million new cancer cases and 9.6 million cancer deaths. Globally, lung cancer registered 11.6% of total cancer incidence (newly diagnosed cases) and 18.4% of mortality (on the total amount of cancer-related deaths). Considering incidence, lung cancer is followed by female breast cancer (11.6%), prostate cancer (7.1%), and colorectal cancer (6.1%). Considering mortality, colorectal cancer (9.2%), stomach cancer (8.2%), and liver cancer (8.2%) complete the top-4 deadliest tumors.
Statistics vary significantly if males and females are considered separately. Lung, prostate and colorectal cancer have the highest incidence and lung, liver and stomach cancer represent the top-3 deadliest tumor types among males. Among females, breast, colorectal and lung cancer are the most frequently diagnosed, and breast, lung and colorectal cancer have the highest mortality, in order. Cervical cancer rates as 4th for both incidence and mortality.
Bray et al. wrote a report about these statistics on CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians, and I report some pie charts that they published about these data.
Here comes the distribution of incidence and deaths by world area in 2018 for both sexes (A), males (B) and females (C):
The same data is presented here below considering the 10 most common kinds of cancer. Again data is presented for both sexes together (A), males only (B) and females only (C).
The world map reported below shows, for each country, the cancer type with the highest incidence, for males and females. Numbers in brackets next to each tumor type in the legend display the number of countries where that tumor type is the most diagnosed. It is impressive how breast cancer is the most diagnosed tumor nearly in every country (154 out of 185):
Below, the same map displays for each country the cancer type with the highest mortality, for males and females. Numbers in brackets next to each tumor type in the legend display the number of countries where that tumor type is the deadliest:
Sources:
Bray et al., Global cancer statistics 2018: GLOBOCAN estimates of incidence and mortality worldwide for 36 cancers in 185 countries. CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians. Vol 68, Issue 6, 2018. https://doi.org/10.3322/caac.21492
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