Pancreatic cancer incidence rises also in Italy

Dr Bouvier and her colleagues have recently published interesting figures on pancreatic cancer trends in France,1 showing a steady increase in standardized incidence rates, whereas mortality is stable with a slightly growing tendency among women. The authors underlined this pattern as peculiar for France, although they do not exclude that a similar trend may appear in other countries. We would like to contribute to this topic by providing some Italian epidemiological data which support the French findings. In Italy, as in France, cancer registration relies on a network of high quality, regional population-based cancer registries. The Italian Network of Cancer Registries [Airtum; www.registri-tumori.it] currently covers about 57% of the resident population, involving almost 34 million inhabitants. Since 2011, Airtum has provided, in collaboration with the Italian Association of Medical Oncologists (AIOM), a yearly update on the figures on cancer in Italy. The 2016 issue2 estimated about 13 500 cases of newly diagnosed pancreas cancers (52% among women); 11 201 deaths had occurred in 2013. Time trends were performed on a sub-sample of cancer registries with full coverage of the period 1999–2011. European age-standardized incidence rates showed an increasing pattern for men, with annual percent change of +1.4% (95% confidence intervals +0.4/+2.3), but not a statistically significant change for women at +1% (−0.1/+2.2). However, mortality was stable among men at +0.1% (−1.1/+1.3) but significantly increasing among women, +1.1% (+0.2/+2.1). As evidenced by Bouvier and colleagues, the increasing incidence trend for pancreas cancer is particularly worrying, considering its prognosis. Unfortunately, Italian patients do not have on average much better results. In fact, recently published Airtum data showed that 5-year age-standardized survival for cases diagnosed in 2009–11 was only 9% for men and 11% for women, respectively.3 Therefore, the growing pancreas cancer incidence is an alarming signal coming from cancer registries both in France and in Italy.