Trends in cancer mortality in Czechoslovakia 1949-1978

The analysis of the trends of the principal causes of deaths in Czechoslovakia indicated leading second position of malignant neoplasms in the whole mortality over the period 1949 through 1978. The rapidly growing all sites cancer mortality trends in males together with their unimportant changes in females resulted in the steadily increasing overmortality of males. Among digestive organs important decrease of stomach and in lesser extent also of oesophageal cancers with simultaneously increasing mortality trends of malignant neoplasms of colon, pancreas and rectum in both sexes were observed. The trends in the cancer mortality of respiratory organs as well as the increasing rates of the whole male cancer mortality were strongly influenced with dramatical increase of lung cancers while these of larynx showed slow increase in males and decrease in females. The rapidly growing mortality trends showed also breast cancer, reaching at the end of the investigated period the first position in the whole female cancer mortality, while the increasing mortality from the malignant neoplasms of the different genital and urinary organs of females were less or more expressed. The relatively high average annual increase was characteristic for the mortality trends of the malignant neoplasms of bladder and other urinary organs and of prostate gland and testis in males. Among other sites the increasing mortality trends from malignant neoplasms of brain and leukemias were of interest.