Ovarian cancer has emerged as one of the most common malignancies affecting women in India. The presentcommunication reports the trends in the incidence rate of ovarian cancer for Indian women. The data publishedin Cancer Incidence in Five Continents for various Indian registries for different periods and / or publication bythe individual registries served as the source material. Mean annual percentage change (MAPC) in rates wascomputed using relative differences between two time periods. During the period 2001-06, the age-standardizedincidence rates (ASR) for ovarian cancer varied from 0.9 to 8.4 per 100,000 person years amongst variousregistries. The highest incidence was noted in Pune &Delhi registries. The Age Specific Incidence Rate (ASIR)for ovarian cancer revealed that the disease increases from 35 years of age and reaches a peak between the ages55-64. The trend analysis by period showed an increasing trend in the incidence rate of ovarian cancer in mostof the registries, with a mean annual percentage increase in ASR ranged from 0.7% to 2.4 %. Analysis of databy ASIR revealed that the mean annual percentage increase was higher for women in the middle and older agegroups in most of the registries. Estimation of annual percent change (EAPC) in ovarian cancer by Poissonregression model through Maximum Likelihood Estimation (MLE) for the data of 3 population-based cancerregistries vs. Mumbai, Chennai and Bangalore for the period 1983-2002 revealed that linear regression wasfound to be satisfactory fit between period and incidence rate. Statistically significant increase in EAPC wasnoted with the crude rate (CR,) ASR, and ASIR for several age-groups. Efforts should be made to detect ovariancancer at an early stage by educating population about the risk factors. Most of the ovarian cancers areenvironmental in origin and consequently, at least in principle avoidable.
)