Cancer Incidence and Mortality in the United States, 1973-77 (1981)

This National Cancer Institute monograph reported data from the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) Program on cancers newly diagnosed, and cancer deaths occurring, in 1973-77. The program collected cancers among residents of 11 participating areas, including Connecticut, Iowa, Utah, Hawaii, Puerto Rico and several metropolitan areas. The report did not study asbestos or any other exposure. Tables classified cases by sex, race, age, area, body site and tissue type. The file held 350,220 malignant cases from all 11 areas, or 327,627 excluding Puerto Rico. The tables paired those 327,627 cases, which exclude Puerto Rico, with 166,185 cancer deaths, giving an incidence-to-mortality ratio of 1.97. Excluding Puerto Rico, 92.2% of malignant cases were confirmed under the microscope. The average annual age-adjusted death rate for the SEER areas combined (excluding Puerto Rico) was 168.5 per 100,000, against 166.5 for the whole United States. The authors suggested SEER incidence rates may reflect national incidence. They warned that using these rates to estimate case numbers elsewhere may overestimate numbers for blacks, because rural blacks were underrepresented. Because of a coding change, a case of "mesothelioma, NOS" could not be reported to SEER until 1977. The scanned text is badly damaged.

We wrote this plain-English summary from the full article with the help of AI, and a second AI model checked each sentence against the article. It is not the authors' wording; the abstract and the article are their own account.

From J-M's medical library

This copy comes from the Johns-Manville medical library. It was among the papers J-M kept in its medical library without an index entry.