Epidemiology Of Pancreatic Cancer In The World

In the current age of the cancer research, pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDA) is one of the most hostile and deadly cancer worldwide. Pancreatic cancer is a sixth leading cause of death due to cancer in Europe and in United States it is the sixth due to because of various reasons like, poor diagnosis as well as prognosis, lack of screening tests, poor life style, no effective treatment and various risk factors. The risk factors for pancreatic cancer involve smoking, advancing age, gender, obesity, diabetes mellitus, high-fat diet, overweight, workplace exposure to particular chemical, family history, chronic pancreatitis, inherited genetic syndrome. Cigarette smoking is a main cause of pancreatic cancer. Almost 20% of pancreatic tumours are due to the cigarette smoking because this smoking causes more genetic mutation in smokers.

Annually 168,000 deaths are caused by pancreatic cancer and it is also a ninth most common cause of cancer death. The rate of incidence is very high for cancer of pancreas, it is even higher than the rate of mortality. The ratio of incidence rate and mortality rate is very high and close to 98%. Mortality rate is extreme in developed countries whereas, the rate of mortality is not high as compared to developed countries in developing counties except central and temperate South America.

Ductal adenocarcinoma is a most common type of pancreatic cancer which has incidence of about 10 in 100,000 population annually. Men are more likely to have this cancer of pancreas than women, the ratio of male and female is 1.5:1. There is no such increase in the incidence since last few decades. The incidence of pancreatic cancer is maximum in age between 60-80 and pancreatic cancer at below 40 years of age is very rare, but the incidence is approximately 200 in 100,000 annually in 80 years old age groups. In men, the pancreatic carcinoma is a 4th most prevalent cause of death by cancer and in women, it is fifth most frequent cause of death because of cancer.

Incidence rate of pancreatic carcinoma was highest in 2012 in Northern America i.e. 7.4 in 100,000 population and in western Europe 7.3 in 100,000 population followed by other regions like Australia, New Zealand and in other parts of Europe which was about 6.5 per 100,000 population. In South-Central Asia and Middle Africa, the rate of incidence was estimated was very low like 1 in 100,000 population. The differences between population with high rate of incidence and low rate of incidence were twenty-fold. Worldwide, 458,918 new cases of incidence were estimated in 2018. The highest rate of incidence in 2018 was observed in Europe which was about 7.7 per 100,000 population and the lowest rate of incidence was estimated in Africa which was 2.2 in 100,000 population. The differences between the highest incidence rates and lowest incidence rates were 30-fold.

In 2018, the mortality rate of pancreatic carcinoma was highest in western parts of Europe which estimated around 7.6 in 100,000 population and the incidence rate was also high in Eastern, Central and Northern Europe which recorded about 7.3 as well as in Northern America was about 6.5. the lowest rate of mortality was found in Eastern Africa (1.4), Western Africa and South-Eastern Asia. In men, the highest death rate was reported in Republic of Moldova which was 12.3 per 100,000 population and Uruguay which was 12.1 in 2018. Although, among women the death rate was highest in United Arab Emirates which was estimated about 10 per 100,000 population. On the other hand, the lowest death rate was observed in Guinea which was 2.0 and Pakistan.

Survival rates of pancreatic carcinoma are very low in both developed and developing countries and the rate of survival for five-year is around 6 %. Pancreatic carcinoma in both men and women and in all races were 9.4% which was diagnosed although, 29.3% was five-year survival for localized disease during 2006-2012 (Nation Cancer Institute, United States). The five-year survival rate was lower than 3% in men as well as women in England and Whales, it was 3.8% in Denmark and Sweden and in Italy it was 1.2%. The highest five-year survival rate in male was 7% in Estonia and in female, it was 7.5% in Czech Republic. Although there was almost zero survival rate in Malta and in female it was 1.3% in Slovenia.