Headlines - Cancer in Metropolitan France: Projections of Cancer Incidence and Mortality in 2017

The Francim cancer registry network, the biostatistics department of the Hospices Civils de Lyon, Santé publique France, and the National Cancer Institute have published projections of cancer incidence and mortality in mainland France for 19 cancer sites.

The primary objective of these projections of cancer incidence and mortality is to estimate, in the very short term, the expected numbers of new cancer cases and cancer deaths in France. These 2017 projections were produced using incidence data observed through 2013 in the departments covered by a cancer registry in the Francim network (17% of the metropolitan population for this final year of recording, or 11 million people) as well as mortality data from the Center for Epidemiology on Medical Causes of Death (Inserm-CépiDc) for the period 1975–2013. Nineteen solid tumor sites were analyzed. For each cancer site, trends were projected for the period 2013–2017.

In 2017, the study estimates 400,000 new cancer cases: nearly 54% in men (214,000) and 46% in women (186,000). Among men, new cancer cases continue to be predominantly represented by: prostate cancer (48,400 estimated new cases in 2013, no projection possible for 2017); lung cancer (32,300 new cases in 2017); and colorectal cancer (24,000 new cases).

Among women, breast cancer remains by far the most common (59,000 new cases), ahead of colorectal cancer (20,800 new cases) and lung cancer (16,800 new cases).The estimated number of cancer deaths is 150,000: 56% among men (84,000 deaths) and 44% among women (66,000 deaths).

Among men, lung cancer (20,800 deaths), colorectal cancer (9,300 deaths), and prostate cancer (8,200 deaths) account for the highest number of deaths. Liver cancer, for which mortality projections are being published for the first time, is the fourth leading cause of cancer death among men (6,100 deaths).

Among women, two cancers account for one-third of cancer deaths: breast cancer (11,900 deaths) and lung cancer (10,200 deaths). Colorectal cancer (8,400 deaths) and ovarian cancer (3,100 deaths) rank third and fourth, respectively. Projections for 2017 show that lung cancer mortality among women is increasingly approaching breast cancer mortality.