Incidence is how many new cases occur in a year; prevalence is how many people are living with the disease at a given moment. A curable or fast-killing cancer can have high incidence but low prevalence.
Incidence, usually given per 100,000 people per year and adjusted for age, is the measure for causes and prevention: it rises when a risk factor spreads (lung cancer after cigarettes) or when screening finds more cases (prostate cancer after PSA testing). Prevalence reflects both incidence and survival, so it grows as treatment improves, and is the measure for health-system planning and survivorship needs; there are now over 18 million cancer survivors in the United States. Lifetime risk (about one in two in high-income countries) is a cumulative incidence, and stage-specific incidence is what screening programmes aim to shift.
This series is the standard reference for US cancer numbers and the source of most headlines about cancer in younger adults. The gap between falling mortality and rising incidence is the argument for both continued treatment advances and stronger prevention and screening.
This edition supplied two widely quoted signals: the first population-level evidence of HPV vaccination preventing cervical cancer in the United States, and the warning that reduced PSA screening was shifting prostate cancer towards later diagnosis.
This edition documented the treatment-driven fall in lung cancer deaths that followed targeted therapy and immunotherapy, a rare case of new drugs visibly moving national mortality statistics.
It is the number to quote when using Israeli registry data, and the reason to treat the most recent year in any registry report as provisional. It also explains why haematological malignancies are the weakest part of the count, and why Israeli non-melanoma skin cancer statistics are not comparable with countries that register it.
This is the methods and overview companion to the widely cited Sung 2021 report and the reference for how the 2020 figures were built.
This edition documented the fastest ever annual fall in US cancer mortality and attributed it in part to targeted therapy and immunotherapy for lung cancer, one of the clearest links between new drugs and national statistics.
This report marked the shift of the global cancer burden towards breast cancer and towards lower-income countries, and it is the baseline most 2020s policy documents cite. The GLOBOCAN 2022 release has since updated the totals.
This paper is the place to check how solid a given country's GLOBOCAN 2018 figure is, which matters when the numbers are used to argue for national cancer plans.
Shares Jemal 2011: Global cancer statistics (GLOBOCAN 2008), Parkin 2005: Global cancer statistics, 2002, Torre 2015: Global cancer statistics, 2012, Sung 2021: GLOBOCAN 2020, the year breast cancer overtook lung cancer as the most diagnosed cancer.
Shares Ferlay 2015: sources, methods and major patterns in GLOBOCAN 2012, Ferlay 2019: GLOBOCAN 2018 sources and methods, Ferlay 2021: cancer statistics for the year 2020, an overview, Jemal 2011: Global cancer statistics (GLOBOCAN 2008).
Shares Prognosis, Bray 2018: GLOBOCAN 2018, worldwide incidence and mortality for 36 cancers, Mortality, Cancer registries and population surveillance.
Shares Sung 2021: GLOBOCAN 2020, the year breast cancer overtook lung cancer as the most diagnosed cancer, Bray 2018: GLOBOCAN 2018, worldwide incidence and mortality for 36 cancers, Siegel 2024: Cancer statistics, 2024, the American Cancer Society's annual US report.
Shares Prognosis, Stage shift, Screening.