More screening raises incidence of prostate and breast tumours

IRELAND has the highest incidence of prostate cancer in Europe, at a rate over 60% higher than the EU average.

However, mortality rates are much lower, with Ireland ranking 11th in Europe with the number of deaths per year from the disease, or 18% higher than the EU average.

The National Cancer Registry report suggests that the high rate of prostate cancer here, like breast cancer, may be related to the very large increase in screening for both diseases in recent years.

The report found that Ireland’s breast cancer incidence ranked fourth highest of 30 European countries surveyed after Belgium. France and the Netherlands.

Registry director, Dr Harry Comber, said the indiscriminate screening of men for prostate cancer using the prostate-specific antigen (PSA) test may not be a good thing.

“There is a lot of over-diagnosis of prostate cancer. We may have the highest incidence of the cancer in Europe, but our death rates are no different from anywhere else.”

A very large percentage of elderly men had prostate cancer, but did not die from the disease.

Dr Comber said there was over-treatment of the cancer because of a difficulty in predicting whether it would prove fatal.

Where people lived appeared to contribute to cancer risk — cancers of the lung, head and neck and cervix were more common in deprived areas, while melanoma (skin cancer) and cancers of the breast and prostate were more common in affluent areas.

The use of chemotherapy has increased for almost all over the past 10 years while overall surgery and radiotherapy rates have remained much the same.

The percentage of patients still alive five years after a cancer diagnosis has increased significantly, from 40% between 1994-1997 to 55% between 2004-2007.

The average age of death from cancer in 2006 was 71.3 years for women and 71.0 for men.

Most patients were over 65 years of age when first diagnosed with most cancers. Over two-thirds of those diagnosed with cancer of the prostate, oesophagus, lung, myeloma, stomach, pancreas and bladder were at least 65 years of age at diagnosis.

However, 93% of patients diagnosed with testicular cancer and 60% of patients diagnosed with cervical cancer were under the age of 50 at the time of diagnosis.

In 2007, cancer was responsible for 36% of all deaths in people under 65, compared with 27% in people aged 65 or over.

Almost half of all deaths in women under 65 were caused by cancer, 29% of deaths in males aged under 65 were cancer deaths.

Leukaemia was the most common invasive cancer diagnosed in children and between 2007 and 2009, seven girls and 16 boys under the age of 10 were diagnosed with the disease.

The report found that, overall, cancer mortality in Ireland was close to the European average.