Oliver Langselius, Postdoctoral Researcher at IARC, shared a poat on LinkedIn:
“How many cancer deaths are avoidable globally?
I’m happy to share our latest article (of which I am first co-author with Harriet Rumgay) titled “Avoidable deaths through the primary prevention, early detection, and curative treatment of cancer worldwide,” now published in The Lancet Global Health.
We developed a novel methodology for this study that integrates both risk factor prevention and survival data into the calculation of avoidable deaths. With this, we estimated the avoidable deaths within five years of cancer diagnosis for 35 cancer types across 185 countries from:
- primary prevention
- early detection and curative treatment
Findings:
– Nearly half of deaths are avoidable: 4.5 million deaths (48%)
– 3.1 million deaths (33%) could be prevented by reducing exposure to major risk factors:
- tobacco
- alcohol
- excess body weight
- infections
- ultraviolet radiation
– 1.4 million deaths (14%) could be averted through improved early detection and curative treatment
– Lung, liver, and stomach cancers led preventable mortality
– Breast, colorectal, and prostate cancers accounted for the most treatable deaths.
In fact, all countries had room for improvement in terms of avoidable deaths (global range of 28.1- 72.8% avoidable deaths).
The burden is far from equal:
- Low HDI settings are disproportionately affected by largely preventable cancers such as cervical cancer and those that are highly treatable in an early stage, such as breast cancer.
- Very high‑HDI face the largest preventable burden from lung cancer, driven by tobacco use.
These findings provide strong evidence supporting WHO’s “best buys” for noncommunicable disease prevention including tobacco control, as well as WHO’s global initiatives for breast and cervical cancer.
The results highlight where the largest disparities in avoidable mortality exist globally. Global tailored efforts targeting prevention, early detection and curative treatment are needed to address inequities in avoidable deaths, especially in low and medium HDI countries.
Check out the results by region, cancer site, and HDI group here (or for your country!)
A huge thanks to my co-authors for all their work on this study – Oliver Langselius, Harriet Rumgay, Jérôme Vignat, Hadrien Charvat, Mark J. Rutherford, Allini Mafra, Eileen Morgan, Mengmeng Li, Luz M Sánchez-Romero, Kate Simms, Freddie Bray, Isabelle Soerjomataram.”
Title: Avoidable Deaths Through the Primary Prevention, Early Detection, and Curative Treatment of Cancer Worldwide: A Population-Based Study.
Authors: Oliver Langselius, Harriet Rumgay, Jérôme Vignat, Hadrien Charvat, Mark J. Rutherford, Allini Mafra, Eileen Morgan, Mengmeng Li, Luz M Sánchez-Romero, Kate Simms, Freddie Bray, Isabelle Soerjomataram.
Other articles featuring Oliver Langselius on OncoDaily.