Background: Cervical cancer ranks fourth in global cancer incidence and mortality among women. A comparison of the global trends in cervical cancer would help us to identify high focus regions and serves an opportunity to evaluate the impact of the screening programs. Hence, the current study was done to assess the global trend in the incidence of cervical cancer from 1993 to 2012 among individuals aged between 30 and 79 years.
Methods: This secondary data analysis was conducted using the World Health Organization (WHO) Cancer Incidence data of five continents plus database (America, Asia, Europe, and Oceania) on the incidence of cervical cancer. Joinpoint regression was performed to determine the average annual percent change (AAPC) in cervical cancer incidence. We performed an age-period-cohort analysis to obtain age, period, and cohort-specific deviations and rate ratio (RR).
Results: Out of the four regions studied, all the regions showed a declining trend in cervical cancer incidence. The maximum decline was found in Oceania (AAPC = -3.3%) followed by America (AAPC = -2.0%). There was a consistent rise in cervical cancer incidence across the age groups in all the four continents with the maximum burden among the elderly. All the regions showed a steady decline in the rate of cervical cancer through the periods 1998-2002 to 2007-2012. There was also a steady decline in cervical cancer incidence across the cohorts from 1923-1927 to 1978-1982 in all the regions except America.
Conclusion: To summarize, cervical cancer incidence showed a declining trend globally, with the maximum decline in the Oceania region from 1993 to 2012.
Keywords: Cohort studies; regression analysis; uterine cervical neoplasms.