The number of Canadians surviving and living with cancer is rising, thanks in part to better detection, reports Statistics Canada.
Of everyone alive in Canada on January 1, 2005, 695,000 had been diagnosed with an invasive cancer at some point in the previous 10 years. That's about 2.2 per cent of the Canadian population, or about 1 in 46 people.
Some individuals were diagnosed with more than one cancer over the 10-year period, so the number of cancer cases actually totalled 723,000.
"We knew, going in, that survival has been increasing for most cancers in Canada and so the more cancers that are diagnosed and the more that survival improves, that's going to lead to more people living with cancer," the study's lead author Larry Ellison told Canada AM Wednesday.
The two most common cancers were breast, prostate, which together accounted for just over half of all cases diagnosed in the previous decade. They were the most common not only because of the relatively high numbers of cases diagnosed, but also because of favourable survival rates.
One in 111 women had been diagnosed with breast cancer, and 1 in 118 men had been diagnosed with prostate cancer.
About one-fifth (20.5 per cent) of all cases in the population were breast cancer, and 18.7 per cent were prostate cancer.
Colorectal cancer was the third most common cancer, at 12.9 per cent. It was followed by:
- - lung cancer (5.1 per cent)
- - bladder cancer (5.0 per cent)
- - non-Hodgkin lymphoma (4.1 per cent)
- - and skin melanoma (4.1 per cent)
Among Canadians aged 20 to 39, the most common cancer was thyroid. The most common cancer in the age groups 40 to 49 and 50 to 59 was breast. And the most common cancer in the older age groups 60 to 69, 70 to 79, and 80 or older was prostate.
The prevalence of most cancers increased with age. Exceptions were testicular cancer among men, cervical and thyroid cancer among women, and Hodgkin lymphoma and brain cancer among both sexes.
Ellison says his team noticed a slightly different pattern of increases among cancer incidences between the sexes.
"Prior to the age of 60, the percentage of women living with cancer was higher than in men. After the age of 60, that reversed itself," said Ellison.
"While both were still increasing, the increase among men was quite a bit more rapid, particularly because of the number of men living with prostate cancer."
