Estimation of Cancer Incidence by Prefectures in Japan

• Published in: ITヘルスケア誌 Vol. 5; no. 2; pp. 135 - 154
• Main Authors: Mai, Utada, Yuko, Ohno, Yukako, Tatsumi, Midori, Soda
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English; Japanese
• Published: ＩＴヘルスケア学会 2010
• Subjects: Cancer Incidence, Estimation, Prefecture
• ISSN: 1881-4808; 1881-4794
• DOI: 10.11204/ithc.5.135

Cancer is the primary cause of death in Japan. Understanding the regional cancer incidence trends is fundamental for helping to plan numerical targets for cancer control in the prefecture. Unfortunately, incidence has not been recorded in every prefecture because of weaknesses in the legal infrastructure for cancer registration in Japan. Presenting a cancer incidence reference by prefecture, especially for areas where population-based cancer registries have not been started or have not achieved sufficient accuracy, would be useful.In this study, we predicted the incidence of major cancers for each prefecture based on the results reported by Utada et al. As a result, different projection tendencies were observed for different prefectures. We believe it is possible to estimate the number of cancer cases by prefectures that have different demographics. However, when we compared the estimated cancer cases with the reported cancer cases, differences were observed. It was difficult to judge whether this was due to characteristics of the prefectural populations or whether this reflected registration patterns for each type of cancer. It is necessary to continuously observe variations in cancer cases.