Purpose: To estimate the number of cancer cases during 2002 in Korea through a nationwide hospital based cancer registration by the Korea Central Cancer Registry (KCCR).
Materials and methods: One hundred and thirty nine hospitals participated in the KCCR program in 2002. Cancer cases were coded and classified according to the International Classification of Diseases for Oncology 2(nd) edition (ICD-O-2). The software program "IARC Check" was used to evaluate the quality of registered cancer cases. Of the 122,770 malignancies registered, 11,732 (9.6%) duplicated malignancies were excluded. Among the remaining 102,677 malignancies, 3,652 (3.6%) cases with carcinoma in situ (Morphology code/2) were separated. Finally, 99,025 malignancies were analyzed.
Results: Of the total of 99,025 malignancies, 55,398 (55.9%) cases were males and 43,627 (44.1%) were females. More than one third of cases were from the elderly (65 years old and more). The six leading primary cancer sites in the order of their relative frequency, were stomach (24.0%), followed by the lung (16.0%), the liver (15.4%), the colorectum (11.6%), the bladder (3.2%), and the prostate (3.0%) among males. In females, the breast (16.8%) was the common cancer site, followed by the stomach (15.3%), the colorectum (10.7%), the thyroid gland (9.5%), the cervix uteri (9.1%), and the lung (6.6%).
Conclusion: With the continued increase in cancer cases especially prostate cancer among males and thyroid cancer among females, the total number of registered cancer cases in Korea continues to rapidly increase.
Keywords: Annual report; Cancer registry.