Burden of cancers in the valley of Kashmir: 5 year epidemiological study reveals a different scenario

Cancer is a major burden worldwide but there are marked geographical variations in frequency and incidence overall. The aim of this study was to find the frequency and distribution of commonly occurring cancers in Kashmir, with particular emphasis on urinary bladder cancer. A total of 4,407 cases of histologically confirmed new cancer cases were registered at the Medical Records Department (MRD) of SKIMS from a period between January, 2005 and April 2010. Among 4407 cancers, 2,457 (55.7 %) were men and 1,950 (44.3 %) were women. Stomach cancer is the leading one with an average frequency of 19.2 % followed by esophagus and lung as 16.5 % and 14.6 %, respectively. Stomach (23 %) and lung (21 %) are the leading cancers in men while as esophageal cancer tops (18.3 %) in women followed by breast cancer (16.6 %). This distribution of cancer types is strikingly different from that in the rest of India where oropharyngeal cancer is most common form. Among urinogenital cancers, bladder cancer was observed to primarily affect Kashmiri population (5.9 %) followed by prostate cancer (2.1 %) and renal carcinoma (1.1 %). We conclude that Kashmir is a very high risk area of most commonly occurring cancers particularly cancers of gastrointestinal tract which comprise more than half the frequency of all the cancers.