Colorectal cancer remains most common cancer in Taiwan: report

Taiwan recorded 75,769 new cancer cases in 2007, 3.4 percent more than in 2006, said Chiou Shu-ti, director-general of the DOH's Bureau of Health Promotion.

Those figures equate to a new cancer patient being diagnosed roughly every 7 minutes in 2007, slightly faster than every 7 minutes and 10 seconds in the previous year, when 73,293 new cases were recorded, Chiou said.

The statistics are available only up through 2007 because the Department of Health needs time to collect raw cancer data from local hospitals and then cross-check it to be sure patients are not counted twice (if, for example, they have been to more than one hospital for a diagnosis) or misidentified.

In the latest version of the DOH annual report on cancer, colorectal cancer remained the most diagnosed type of cancer in 2007 after displacing liver cancer as the most common form of the disease in 2006.

After colorectal cancer and liver cancer, the next most frequently diagnosed forms of the disease in 2007 were lung cancer, breast cancer and oral cancer.

These five types accounted for 56 percent of all new cancer patients in the country for the year.

The risk of cancer among men was 1.4 times higher than among women in Taiwan, Chiou said.

Because of the largely male habits of smoking and chewing betel nuts, the age-adjusted incidence rates of esophageal cancer and oral cancer among men were 12.7 times and 11.3 times higher respectively than among women in 2007, Chiou added.

According to Kung Hsien-lan, a section chief with the Cancer Control and Prevention Division, the incidence of breast cancer and thyroid gland cancer increased the most among Taiwanese women. Both diseases were related to imbalances in female sex hormones, she said.

High fat diets and high caloric intakes, which disturb female sex hormones, have raised the risk of Taiwanese women being afflicted with cancer, Kung said.

Meanwhile, she noted, Taiwanese women were found to develop breast cancer an average 10 years earlier than their Western counterparts.

She attributed the increased prevalence of colorectal cancer among Taiwan's people to increasingly unhealthy dietary habits, such as the high consumption of red meat and fat and a low fiber intake.

Meanwhile, both Chiou and Kung said that the Bureau of Health Promotion will expand its free early cancer detection program by offering more free tests -- mammography screening for breast cancer, Pap smear tests for cervical cancer, taking samples of a patient's mucous membrane for oral cancer, and fecal occult blood tests for colorectal cancer.

Chiou estimates that the program will help detect an additional 10,000 new cancer cases this year, and those identified as having the disease will be given immediate medical attention.

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