[Incidence of head and neck cancers in Belgium: comparison with world wide and French data ]

The squamous cell carcinomas of the upper aerodigestive tracts are frequent neoplasia,with as much as 466,831 and 168,368 cases diagnosed in 2008 among men and women worldwide,respectively. As such, they make up the sixth most frequent neoplasia among men and the eighth among women. Their frequency shows interesting variations covering the last 20 years, with an ascending tendency among women, which is higher in Europe, and a descending tendency in men, maximal in the USA. The comparison with the Belgian official data reveals a striking elevation of incidence of these cancers between both sexes, with important regional differences in Belgium. Finally, when we compare Belgian and French data, these cancers seem more frequent in France in men, but there is an opposite tendency among women, in which the carcinoma of the larynx is most represented in Belgium. Although the limited quality of the data limits the interpretation of these data, they seem to be partly in line with the evolution of the risk factors of these pathologies.