International Comparisons of Cumulative Risk of Gallbladder Cancer and other Biliary Tract Cancer, from Cancer Incidence in Five Continents Vol. VIII

Cumulative risk of gallbladder cancer and other biliary tract cancer (ICD-10: C23-24) incidence to age 69 was calculated with data from Cancer Incidence in Five Continents Vol. VIII (1). Cumulative risk is defined as the probability that an individual will develop the disease in question during a certain age span, in the absence of other competing causes of death. The comparisons of the cumulative risk of gallbladder cancer and other biliary tract cancer incidence among 22 registries (and ethnic groups), are shown in Fig. 1. Males showed higher cumulative incidence risk compared with females in eight registries: Miyagi, Nagasaki, Osaka, Seoul, LA Korean, LA Chinese, Hawaii Japanese and Hawaii Chinese. In contrast, females showed higher risk in the other registries, though males and females had nearly equal risk in Singapore and Florence. We found the highest risk in Seoul in males and in Nagasaki in females. The lowest cancer risk was found in South Thames registry in males and among Hawaii Chinese in females. These results may be interpreted as indicating that gallbladder cancer and other biliary tract cancer are particularly common in males among East Asian race and common in females among Caucasians, and that cumulative incidence risk variation depends on geographical location; we found higher risks in Japan and Korea. However, it is possible that these findings are somewhat due to the difference in composition of C23 and C24 in the total cases.