Geographic Variation in Cancer Incidence and its Patterns in Urban Maharashtra , 2001

In this paper an attempt has been made to study the geographic variations in cancer incidence and its pattern inUrban Maharashtra. Data collected by Mumbai, Poona, Nagpur, and Aurangabad, Population based CancerRegistries, for the year 2001 have been utilized. The incidence patterns by sex, age, and religion has been comparedbetween these four agglomerations. Besides this childhood cancers and tobacco related cancers for each registry arealso described. Age specific cancer incidence rates show increasing trend with increasing age in all the four populations.The curves for Mumbai, Poona, Nagpur are closed together with fluctuations, indicating similarities in the rise. Inall the four registries, amongst males, cancers of the lung, larynx, oesophagus, tongue and prostate while in femalesbreast, cervix, ovary, oesophagus, mouth and leukemias occupy places in ten leading sites. The praportion of childhoodcancers varies from 1.9% in females in Poona to 4.5% in males in the Nagpur populations. The proportion oftobacco related cancers varies in males from 38.9% in Poona to 54.4% in Aurangabad, where as in females from14.1% in Nagpur to 21.7% in Aurangabad. Considerable variations was observed in the incidence of cancer ofvarious sites in both the sexes, professing different religious faiths within this populations. The findings of this papercan be used to estimate the incidence and prevalence of cancer for future for whole Maharashtra state and studies incancer etiology and control can be planned.