Aims: While cancer can occur at any age, incidence increases dramatically after 50 years of age. With an ageing population, the number of adults aged 65+ years diagnosed with cancer is expected to increase, placing challenges to health care system. We describe here cancer incidence, mortality and survival for adults aged 65+ years in Queensland.
Methods: The Queensland Oncology Repository (QOR) collates and matches patient-level administrative and clinical data from the Queensland Cancer Register together with public and private hospital admissions, pathology, radiology, treatment, and mortality data. Age-standardised (ASR) incidence and mortality rates were calculated along with 5-year prevalence and five-year relative survival.
Results: Overall, cancer incidence increased from 1,928/1000,000 in 1982 to 2,394/100,000 in 2016. Significant annual percentage change of +3.2% (95%CI=2.3-4.0) and +0.3% (95%CI=0.2-0.4) were observed in the periods 1986-1993 and 1993-2016, respectively. Mortality increased by 1.1% annually (95%CI=0.8-1.3) (p <0.001) from 1982-1996 and decreased by 0.7% annually (95%CI= -0.8--0.5) (p<0.001) from 1996 to 2016. In 2016 the most common cancers diagnosed were prostate, haematological and melanoma accounting for 41% of all cancers. Lung cancer and colorectal cancer accounted for 20% and 12% of all cancer deaths, respectively. By the end of 2016, 53,348 Queenslanders aged 65+years were alive following a diagnosis of cancer within the previous five years, representing 7.5% of the population aged 65+ years. Five-year relative survival was 56.0% in the period 1997-2001 increasing to 62.6% from 2012-2016. Increases in survival were larger for males (15.5% increase) compared to females (6.6% increase) over the two time periods.
Conclusions: While the incidence of cancer in the older ages continues to increase, mortality rates are decreasing. The reductions in mortality likely reflect improvements in treatment and follow-up care. With the significant improvements in survival, there is now a growing population of older aged cancer survivors.