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UK statistics on the prevalence of cancer

This page presents cancer prevalence statistics for the UK. The cancer incidence section has statistics on the number of new cases of cancer diagnosed with cancer each year.

Cancer incidence refers to the number of new cancer cases arising in a specified period of time: cancer prevalence refers to the number of people who have received a diagnosis of cancer who are alive at any given time, some of whom will be cured and others who will not. Therefore prevalence reflects both the incidence of cancer and its associated survival pattern.

Overall it is estimated that approximately 2% of the population of the UK are alive having received a diagnosis of cancer: that is, around 1.2 million people. The single cancer that contributes most to this total is breast cancer, with an estimated 172,000 women alive who have had a diagnosis of breast cancer.

Table 7.1 shows the estimates of cancer prevalence for the UK calculated from rates for England and Scotland from the EUROPREVAL study and applied to the 2000 population estimates for the countries of the UK1.

Download this table (18KB)

The EUROPREVAL study uses data from EUROCARE2, which includes patients diagnosed up to the end of 19922. The continued fall in overall cancer mortality and the increase in incidence since 1992 mean that these figures are likely to be underestimates.

References

1. Forman, D., et al., Cancer prevalence in the UK: results from the EUROPREVAL study. Ann Oncol, 2003. 14(4): p. 648-654
2. Berrino, F., R. Capocaccia, et al. (1999). Survival of Cancer Patients in Europe: the EUROCARE-2 Study IARC.

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