Years of life lost due to cancer in the United Kingdom from 1988 to 2017

Abstract

Background We investigated the application of years of life lost (YLL) in routine cancer statistics using cancer mortality data from 1988 to 2017. Methods Cancer mortality data for 17 cancers and all cancers in the UK from 1988 to 2017 were provided by the UK Association of Cancer Registries by sex, 5-year age group, and year. YLL, age-standardised YLL rate (ASYR) and age-standardised mortality rate (ASMR) were estimated. Results The annual average YLL due to cancer, in the time periods 1988–1992 and 2013–2017, were about 2.2 and 2.3 million years, corresponding to 4510 and 3823 ASYR per 100,000 years, respectively. During 2013–2017, the largest number of YLL occurred in lung, bowel and breast cancer. YLL by age groups for all cancers showed a peak between 60–64 and 75–79. The relative contributions to incidence, mortality, and YLL differ between cancers. For instance, pancreas (in women and men) made up a smaller proportion of incidence (3%) but bigger proportion of mortality (6 and 5%) and YLL (5 and 6%), whereas prostate cancer (26% of incidence) contributed 13% mortality and 9% YLL. Conclusion YLL is a useful measure of the impact different cancers have on society and puts a higher weight on cancer deaths in younger individuals.

Adult brain tumour research in 2024: Status, challenges and recommendations

“…Although Figure 3A indicates that funding allocation is proportional to prevalence, this does not take into account the malignancy of each cancer subtype. Indeed, when funding allocation is plotted according to the average years of life lost, brain cancer is a clear outlier [23, 25] (Figure 3C). Inspecting how funding is allocated within cancer subtype, according to the Common Scientific Outline (a 6‐tier classification of types of cancer research), we see that a relatively large portion of neuro‐oncology research is still focused on understanding the basic biology of the disease, where the more well‐funded cancers have more money allocated to earlier detection and prevention research (Figure 3D) [23].…”

MicroRNAs: circulating biomarkers for the early detection of imperceptible cancers via biosensor and machine-learning advances

“…Current trajectories suggest that global cancer cases will reach over 35 million by 2050 [ 1 ] and that almost half of all cancer cases that were diagnosed in England in 2018 were at advanced stages (3 and 4) [ 2 ]. This highlights the urgency of early detection in order to attempt to reduce the burden this will inevitably cause on patients, their social support network, healthcare systems, as well as local and global economies.…”