Increasing occurrence of urological cancers in Slovakia

Similarly as in other developed countries of the world cancers of the upper and lower urinary tract are increasing also in Slovakia. Of greater importance are urological cancers in men participating recently worldwide with 17% on all newly diagnosed cancers. In women only 3% of all incident cases occur in urological sites. Data on incidence of urological cancers in the period 1968-1999 were derived from the National Cancer Registry, while those of mortality from the Statistical Office of the Slovak Republic. World standard population was used for the age-adjustment of both indicators. Temporal trends were evaluated using Poisson regression and computation of mean annual percent changes (MACP). Substantial and nearly parallel increase of incidence and of mortality has been observed for prostate cancer. Despite dramatic increase of testicular cancers incidence, corresponding mortality rates remained stable with the tendency to decrease recently. Incidence and mortality rates of urinary bladder cancer in men showed tendency to peaking while in women incidence increased and mortality showed tendency to stabilization. Incidence rates of kidney cancers increased in both sexes during the whole period, followed by slow increase of mortality at substantially lower levels. With the exception of mortality from testicular cancer all analyzed trends were statistically significant. In conclusion, only in the case of testicular cancer important reduction of mortality has been obtained despite dramatic increase of incidence. Reduction of smoking and improvement of industrial hygiene may influence the development of bladder cancer incidence and mortality. Limited resources for establishment of a concise cancer control program in this country do not allow to slow down in the near future the increase of incidence and mortality of prostate and kidneys cancers in Slovakia.