Taiwan’s “cancer clock” sped up by 14 seconds in 2023, indicating a diagnosis every 3 minutes, 48 seconds, with lung cancer remaining the most commonly diagnosed cancer among men and women, the Ministry of Health and Welfare said yesterday, citing the Health Promotion Administration’s (HPA) latest cancer registry data.
Since 1979, hospitals with more than 50 beds have been required to record new cancer cases in the registry, creating a valuable reference for setting cancer-prevention policies, HPA Director-General Shen Ching-fen (沈靜芬) said.
The latest data, from 2023, showed that 138,051 people were newly diagnosed with cancer, an increase of 7,758 from the previous year, while the age-standardized incidence rate of all cancers was 331.3 per 100,000 people, up by eight from 2022, she said.
Photo courtesy of the Formosa Cancer Foundation via CNA
Lung cancer remained the most commonly diagnosed cancer for the third year, with 19,986 new cases in 2023, followed by colorectal cancer, with 19,074 new cases, and female breast cancer, with 17,779 new cases, Cancer Prevention and Control Division Director Hsieh Pei-chun (謝佩君) said.
The top 10 most common cancers diagnosed in 2023 were lung, colorectal, female breast, liver, prostate, oral cavity, thyroid, skin, gastric and corpus uteri cancers, the data showed.
Hsieh said the rankings were nearly the same as in 2022, except that skin and gastric cancers swapped positions.
Also compared with 2022, the standardized incidence rates of breast, liver and oral cancers were reduced, while gastric cancer remained the same, but the other cancers on the list have increased, she said.
The lung cancer standardized incidence rate has been increasing over the past two decades, but the standardized mortality rate has been falling, Hsieh said.
The main risk factors include smoking, secondhand smoke, a family history of lung cancer, chronic lung diseases and air pollution, she added.
Newly diagnosed lung cancer cases have continued to increase in the past few years, from 16,232 in 2019 to 19,986 in 2023, the data showed.
The increase in cases could be due to better disease awareness and the introduction in July 2022 of the government-funded low-dose computed tomography screening for high-risk groups, Hsieh said.
The stage at which lung cancer is detected drastically affects mortality, with the five-year relative survival rate for stages 0 to 1 at more than 90 percent, which drops to about 10 to 20 percent for stage 4 cancer, she said.
Among people who were screened, 85.9 percent of those diagnosed with lung cancer were while the disease was in the early stages, but among those who did not receive screening and were diagnosed with lung cancer, only 39.4 percent were in the early stages, she said.
The increase in cancer incidence rates are associated with multiple factors, including an aging population, industrialization, pollution, obesity and unhealthy lifestyles, such as smoking, a poor diet and lack of exercise, Shen said.
Getting screened regularly for cancer is the best way to detect it in its early stages and receive effective treatment, she said.
The HPA encourages eligible recipients, especially people in high-risk groups, to use the agency’s cancer screening programs as early as possible and regularly, she added.
People should also take multiple approaches to cancer prevention, especially starting with changing their lifestyle, such as eating adequate amounts of dietary fiber to help prevent colorectal cancer, doing at least 150 minutes of aerobic exercise per week and getting the human papillomavirus vaccination, she added.
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