Cervical cancer mortality in young women in Europe: patterns and trends
Section snippets
Material and methods
Official death certification numbers for 24 European countries (including the Russian Federation, but excluding a few small countries such as Andorra and Liechtenstein) were derived from the World Health Organisation (WHO) database as available on electronic support [8]. During the calendar period considered (1960–1998), five different revisions of the International Classification of Diseases (ICD) were used 9, 10, 11, 12, 13. Classification of cancer deaths were thus re-coded, for all calendar
Results
Table 1 gives the average annual number of certified deaths from cervix, corpus uteri and unspecified uterus for selected European countries around 1960 and 1995. In 1960, the proportion of unspecified uterine cancers ranged between 6.0 in England and Wales, 10.6–12.5% in Switzerland and Norway, and 18.2–26.4% in the other Scandinavian countries to over 70% in France, Greece, Italy and Spain, with several countries showing proportions of unspecified uterine cancers of 35–50%. These figures
Discussion
Two main messages can be derived from the present systematic analysis of uterine cancer mortality in Europe: first, overall national death certification rates can not be used to obtain meaningful measures of patterns of trends in uterine cancer mortality, due to a substantial and variable proportion of deaths from unspecified uterine neoplasms and, second, death certification rates from uterine cancer in younger women (20–44 years) declined substantially in most Western European countries, but
Acknowledgements
Supported by the Swiss League against Cancer and the Italian Association for Cancer Research. The project received financial support from the European Commission (Contract grant sponsor: European Union, Commission of the European Communities, Directorate-General for Employment, Industrial Relations and Social Affairs; Contract grant number: SOC 97 201143).
Neither the European Commission nor any person acting on its behalf is liable for any use made of this information.
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