"What is the most common cancer among Koreans?"
Medical Trivia
What is the most common cancer among Koreans?
(Feat. Korea University Guro Hospital, Breast Endocrinology Surgery, Prof. Woo Sang-wook Live)
What is the most common cancer among Koreans?
I would like to ask you a question in order to share with you the realization I gained during a live broadcast with Professor Woo Sang-wook of the Department of Breast Endocrinology at Ancient Guro Hospital a while ago.
< with Professor Woo Sang-wook broadcasting in the studio after the rain>
Many of you will say that it is stomach cancer. If you look at the actual statistics, stomach cancer accounts for 12.8% of all cancers, so it is right to be number one. However, if you think about it from a different perspective, the answer may be different. In other words, if you narrow it down to women and not both sexes, breast cancer is the overwhelming number one.
As you can see in the figure below, breast cancer occurs in 20.3% of all cancers in women, more than twice as many as stomach cancers (8.9%). Stomach cancer is the most common cancer in men and women combined, but if you narrow it down to women, breast cancer is much more common. Given that the word "common", that is, how frightening its prevalence is in certain populations, and how much effort should be made for prevention and early detection, is an indicator of the so-called priorities of health policy, it can be seen that breast cancer is more important than stomach cancer. Breast cancer means that women of both sexes can achieve much greater results with half the effort and effort.
Source: National Cancer Registry Statistics
This time, I'm going to ask you a question to help you realize how common breast cancer is in women. What are the chances of a woman in my country getting breast cancer in her lifetime? As you can see in the figure below, the probability of cancer in women is 33.8% if they live to the end of life expectancy (women: 86 years). However, breast cancer has a frequency of 20.3% of all cancers in women, which means that if a Korean woman survives to the end of her life expectancy, it will be 6.86%, which means that 1 in 15 women in Korea will develop breast cancer once in her lifetime. It's not a small number.
Unfortunately, breast cancer is increasing in women in Korea at a very fast rate. Compared to 2002, the incidence rate per 100,000 women in 2008 increased by 91%, from 20.4 to 38.9. This is the number one breast cancer rate among OECD countries. This is much higher than in Japan, where the incidence rate is increasing rapidly after Korea (31%).
Source: Korean Breast Cancer Society, Breast Cancer White Paper (2017)
Breast cancer is so common in the United States that 1 in 8 women will develop breast cancer. Actresses like Angelina Jolie made headlines when she underwent surgery to remove her breasts for preventive purposes through genetic testing, even though she had not even had breast cancer yet. If the current trend continues in Korea, it may occur in 1 in 8 cases like in the United States.
However, there is no need to be too intimidated. Professor Woo Sang-wook emphasized the importance of early diagnosis in preparation for the rapidly increasing number of breast cancers in the last broadcast. If diagnosed and treated early, the prognosis is good, with a 5-year survival rate of up to 95%. I would like to ask all women to make efforts for "early diagnosis through active screening".
[Reference]
1. Major Cancer Incidence Status by Gender (2017), Major Cancer Incidence by Gender (2017) - 2017 National Cancer Registry Statistics
https://ncc.re.kr/cancerStatsView.ncc?bbsnum=498&searchKey=total&searchValue=&pageNum=1
2. Breast Cancer Growth Rate - Korean Breast Cancer Society, Breast Cancer White Paper (2017)
https://www.kbcf.or.kr/bhi/bhi_info/present/occurrence_rate_foreign.do
3. 2018 CANCER INCIDENCE DISTRIBUTION IN WOMEN – ACS JOURNALS
https://acsjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.3322/caac.21492
4. Probability of cancer in women if they survive to life expectancy - 2017 National Cancer Registry Statistics
https://ncc.re.kr/cancerStatsView.ncc?bbsnum=498&searchKey=total&searchValue=&pageNum=1
5. Breast Cancer 5-Year Survival Rate – Breast Cancer White Paper 2018
https://www.kbcs.or.kr/journal/file/181030.pdf
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