Colorectal Cancer Incidence in Korea Is Not the Highest in the World

Recently, media as well as academic societies have referred to GLOBOCAN 2012 to support the high incidence rate of colorectal cancer in Korea. According to GLOBOCAN 2012, colorectal cancer incidence ranked third for men and fifth for women, and the highest when both sexes were combined among 184 countries (Table Because GLOBOCAN intended to provide the most recent estimates of cancer incidence, mortality, and prevalence for 28 cancers worldwide, the quality of country estimates varied from high quality national or regional data to no data Therefore, the accuracy of estimates are dependent on the availability and the accuracy of the data from each country Korean data is high quality national data with rates projected to 2012. The most recent incidence data used for GLOBOCAN estimates was for the year 2009 Indeed, the age-standardized incidence of colorectal cancer increased by 5.3% annually between 1999 and 2012 However, according to the Korea Central Cancer Registry data, the colorectal cancer incidence decreased for men and stabilized for women in 2012 Since projection used for GLOBOCAN 2012 applied trends until 2009, which was an annual percent change of 6.2% for both sexes [4], the GLOBOCAN estimates overestimated the incidence for the Korean population.