Descriptive epidemiology of lymphatic malignancies in Greater Bombay

Lymphoid malignancies as a group constitute one of the important cancers met in India as elsewhere in the world, but while information on incidence, mortality, survival and trends, are available from most of the developed countries, there are very few reports available from the rest of the world. The basic data utilized for this study was obtained from the Bombay Cancer Registry, the first population based registry to be established in India. Descriptive epidemiology of these malignancies was obtained by utilizing 5-year data of incidence and mortality of different cell types in males and females. For studying time trends in the incidence of these cancers, data of the past 30 years has been used. As a group, the lymphatic malignancies represent only 5% of the incidence and 3.9% of the mortality of the total number of cancers in Greater Bombay. Males in general, seem to be more affected by lymphomas than females. Non-Hodgkin's lymphomas are the commonest lymphatic malignancies to be detected in Bombay. The incidence curves show striking difference in lymphatic malignancies by cell type. In Bombay the incidence of these cancers was found to be the highest in the Parsis. Our data indicates that there is an increasing trend in incidence in all cell types of lymphomas, in both sexes. To obtain the details of the risk factors of these malignancies, more analytic epidemiological studies have to be undertaken of the Indian data and more importance given to lymphomas in the early detection and control of cancer.