[The epidemiology of gallbladder cancer in Italy. ISTAT data 1970-1987]

The Italian surgeon needs to know the real situation about gallbladder carcinoma in Italy, his professional field of action: real incidence, sex and age characteristics and regional distribution with useful correlations to define the risk population. We can use nowadays the ISTAT data (since 1969 also in magnetic tape) about such neoplasia, based on death denunces. These differentiate gallbladder carcinoma from others hepatobiliary neoplasms and are referred to the whole national territory and allow and analyze for the various regions a period of 18 years (from 1970 to 1987). We have therefore the facility of a statistical index which give us the possibility to compare directly the specific mortality taxes between very different regions of residence from the point of view of population density, sex and age distribution on each year of the period considered. Also in Italy incidence of gallbladder carcinoma shows an absolute and relative increasing with age in both sexes, reaching the peak in the seventy's, with a M/F rate between 1/3 to 1/2, and with global incidence that is increasing in the last years. Risk factors could be in the age older than 50 years, in the females, in the long standing gallbladder lithiasis with wide cholesterinic stones on the basis of a chronic inflammation and consequent dysplasia, in the diet more far from the mediterranean's, and finally in papillomas and papillomatosis of gallbladder.