Cancer in Kashmir Valley: Current trends, burden and pattern

There is an overall surge of malignancies in most of the developing countries including India. Dearth of data from Kashmir prompted us to embark upon a study on burden and pattern of cancer in Kashmir over previous 5 years.

Data acquisition from January 2016 to December 2020 was accomplished from the departmental archives of a large tertiary care institute of Kashmir valley. All histologically proven malignant cases were included for the present study. Information regarding the age, gender, site of primary malignancy and histological diagnosis was obtained.

A total of 5,392 cases of malignancies were considered for final analysis with a mean age at diagnosis of 56.73 years (SD = 15.96). Maximum number of cases were recorded in the age group of 60-69 years. Maximum number of malignancies were encountered in year 2018 with substantial drop in subsequent years. Gastrointestinal malignancies constitute more than one-third of total number of malignancies across both genders. In males, stomach was the common site of malignancy followed by lung and colorectal region whereas in females most common sites were breast, colorectal, and stomach.

This study portrays close reflection of the cancer patterns within the valley in recent years which is strikingly different from rest of the country and world.