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UK Kidney Cancer incidence statistics
This page presents statistics on kidney cancer incidence, including by age and sex, by site, histology and stage, geographic variation within the UK, the EU and worldwide, trends over time, and by deprivation group.
Kidney cancer accounts for 3% of all new cases of cancer diagnosed in men and just under 2% of all cancers in women in the UK (excluding non-melanoma skin cancer).1-4
Even though kidney cancer is a relatively rare cancer, there have been reports of increasing incidence and mortality across the world, including the UK. Some, but not all, of this increase is believed to be due to the wider application of diagnostic imaging techniques resulting in more kidney tumours being found incidentally.
Unless otherwise specified, the definition of kidney cancer used in this section includes cancers of the renal parenchyma, the renal pelvis and the ureter, plus other specified and unspecified cancers of the urinary organs (Figure 1.1).
The ICD code for kidney cancer is ICD9 189 and ICD10, C64, C65, C66 and C68.5,6
Kidney cancer incidence by age and sex
In the UK kidney cancer is the eighth most common cancer in men, with 4,622 new cases diagnosed in 2005. This compares to 2,758 new cases of kidney cancer in women, giving a male:female ratio of 3:2. In women it is the fourteenth most common cancer.
The number of new cases and rates for kidney cancer in the UK and its constituent countries are shown in Table 1.1.1-4 Overall, kidney cancers are responsible for almost 3% of all cancers in the UK and it is the eleventh most common cancer.
Figure 1.2 shows kidney cancer incidence by age-group.1-4 There are very few cases of kidney cancer in early adulthood, but from age 40 the rates begin to rise steeply. The highest rates in both sexes are in the over 75s.
It has been estimated that the lifetime risk of developing kidney cancer is 1 in 89 for men and 1 in 162 for women.8
Around 90 cases of kidney cancer are diagnosed each year in children, with three-quarters of those occurring in children under five. The most common kidney cancer in childhood is Wilms’ tumour. More details on kidney cancer in children can be found in the childhood cancer section7.
Kidney cancer incidence by site, histology and stage
In adults in England and Wales almost 90% of malignant kidney tumours arise in the renal parenchyma, whilst a further 5% arise in the renal pelvis and 5% in the ureter.9 (Figure 1.1)
Cancers of the renal parenchyma are also known as renal cell carcinomas (RCC). There are five subgroups of RCCs: conventional (clear cell, also called non papillary), which account for 75-80% of RCC tumours; papillary (chromophilic) accounting for 10-15% and chromophobe, collecting duct carcinoma and unclassified renal cell carcinoma which together make up the remainder of RCC tumours. Tumours in the renal pelvis consist mainly of transitional cell carcinomas (TCC).10
Data from South East England for 2005 show that 36% of kidney cancers are diagnosed when at a local stage, about a quarter of cases are with distant metastases and a third of cases have unknown stage.11
Geographic variations in kidney cancer incidence
Within the UK and Ireland there is a clear geographical distribution of kidney cancer incidence for both men and women, with higher rates of incidence in the north compared to the south.12
Figure 1.3 shows the pattern of kidney cancer incidence for women, with age-standardised rates above the UK and Ireland average in Scotland, parts of Wales and Northern Ireland and below that average in Eastern and London regions.
The north/south divide of kidney cancer incidence follows the geographical pattern of two known risk factors for this disease - smoking and obesity (find out more on kidney cancer risk factors page).
Around 208,500 new cases of kidney cancer are diagnosed in the world each year, accounting for just under 2% of all cancers.10 The highest rates are recorded in Northern America and the lowest rates in Asian and African regions (Figure 1.4).13
Part of the observed geographical variation in kidney cancer incidence may be due to differences in the frequency of use of diagnostic imaging techniques and autopsy rates.10
Within the European Union (EU) there is less variation than there is worldwide. The rates for the UK are lower than the EU average for both males and females as can be seen in Figure 1.5.1-4
The most recent estimates of incidence of kidney cancer suggest that there are 63,300 new cases annually in the EU25. In this region, kidney cancer accounts for nearly 3% of all cancer cases.14
Kidney cancer incidence trends over time
Increases in kidney cancer incidence have been reported in many different countries around the world.15 There has been some debate as to how much this is due to the introduction of new imaging methods, such as ultrasound and computed tomography (CT), which leads to the incidental detection of asymptomatic disease.16-18
Analysis of US data demonstrated a 73% increase in the use of abdominal or pelvic CT scans or magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) between 1986 and 1994.19 Kidney cancer incidence trends by tumour stage in the US population between 1975-1995 recorded the greatest increase for localised tumours but also increases in more advanced and unstaged tumours, suggesting that detection of asymptomatic tumours by imaging does not fully explain the increases seen for kidney cancer overall.19
A similar conclusion, that at least part of the increase in incidence is real and not solely contributable to incidentally-detected tumours, was reached by a British study of incidence and mortality trends from 1978 to 1997 in the Northern and Yorkshire region of England.20
In Great Britain kidney cancer incidence has risen since the mid-1970s for both men and women (Figure 1.6).1-4
Male kidney cancer incidence rates increased by more than 85% from 7.1 per 100,000 in 1975 to 13.4 per 100,000 in 2005. In women the rates have more than doubled over the same period from 3.2 to 6.6 per 100,000. Most of the increase has occurred in older men and women, with rates more than doubling between 1975 and 2005 for men in their 70s and early 80 and women aged 65 and over (Figure 1.7 and Figure 1.8).1-4
The kidney cancer incidence trend for the UK can be seen in Figure 1.9.
Kidney cancer incidence by deprivation group
There is no significant gradient of kidney incidence or mortality by Carstairs index in Scotland21 or in England and Wales.9 This is perhaps surprising as most cancers that show an association with smoking also show an association with deprivation.9
A study looking at data from Yorkshire found that for patients diagnosed with kidney cancer between 1978-82 incidence was higher among the most deprived groups than the least deprived groups (3.2 v 2.5 per 100,000) but for patients diagnosed between 1993-97 there was no such difference.20
References for kidney cancer incidence
- Office for National Statistics, Registrations of cancer diagnosed in 2005, England 2008
- Northern Ireland Cancer Registry, Registrations of cancer diagnosed in 2005, Northern Ireland 2008
- Information and Statistics Division, Scotland Registrations of cancer diagnosed in 2005, Scotland 2008
- Welsh Cancer Intelligence and Surveillance Unit, Registrations of cancer diagnosed in 2005, Wales 2008
- Tortora, G.J. and Anagnostakos, N.P. Principles of Anatomy and Physiology sixth edition. 1990, New York: Harper & Row.
- Alison, M.R., ed. The Cancer Handbook. 2002, London: Nature Publishing Group
- Cancer Research UK, CancerStats - Childhood Cancer - UK. 2007.
- Quinn, M., et al., Registrations of cancer diagnosed in 1994-1997, England & Wales in Health Statistics Quarterly 07 Autumn 2000. Office for National Statistics. p. 71-82.
- Quinn, M., et al., Cancer Trends in England & Wales 1950-1999. Vol. SMPS No. 66. 2001: TSO.
- Lindblad, P. and Adami H.O, Kidney Cancer, in Textbook of Cancer Epidemiology, 2002, New York: Oxford University Press. p. 467-485.
- Thames Cancer Registry, personal comms. 2007.
- Quinn M, Cooper N, Rowan S. Cancer Atlas of the United Kingdom and Ireland 1991-2000 ONS, 2005
- GLOBOCAN 2002, Cancer Incidence, Mortality and Prevalence Worldwide 2002 estimates. 2006.
- Ferlay, J., et al., Estimates of the cancer incidence and mortality in Europe in 2006. Ann Oncol, 2007. 18(3): p. 581-92
- Mathew, A., et al., Global increases in kidney cancer incidence, 1973-1992. Eur J Cancer Prev, 2002. 11(2): p. 171-8
- Jayson, M. and Sanders, H., Increased incidence of serendipitously discovered renal cell carcinoma. Urology, 1998. 51(2): p. 203-5
- Hollingsworth, J.M., et al., Rising Incidence of Small Renal Masses: A Need to Reassess Treatment Effect. J. Natl. Cancer Inst., 2006. 98(18): p. 1331-1334
- Nguyen, M.M., Gill, I.S., and Ellison, L.M., The evolving presentation of renal carcinoma in the United States: trends from the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results program. J Urol, 2006. 176(6 Pt 1): p. 2397-400; discussion 400
- Chow, W.H., et al., Rising incidence of renal cell cancer in the United States. Jama, 1999. 281(17): p. 1628-31
- Tate, R., et al.,Increased incidence of renal parenchymal carcinoma in the Northern and Yorkshire region of England, 1978-1997. European Journal of Cancer, 2003. 39: p. 961-967
- ISD Scotland,Incidence, mortality and cause-specific survival at 5 years by deprivation quintile. 2007
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