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Cancer Prevalence: How Many People Have Cancer?
Cancer prevalence is defined as the total number of people living with cancer at any point in time. It includes both people diagnosed with cancer in the past (who are still alive) as well as people recently diagnosed.

Cancer prevalence is not a measure of how common a cancer is. This number is reflected by cancer incidence, which is the number of people newly diagnosed with cancer in a given time period (usually one year). Prevalence is affected both by the incidence of a cancer and by how long people normally live with the disease.

For example, lung cancer is the second most common cancer in both men and women, but lung cancer prevalence is not as high as that of some less common cancers because people with lung cancer tend not to live as long once diagnosed.

The following numbers come from the US National Cancer Institute’s Surveillance Epidemiology and End Results (SEER) database for the year 2004, the most recent year for which reliable estimates are available. These are estimates based on a sampling of the US population. Numbers may not add up due to rounding to the nearest 1,000.

Estimated United States Cancer Prevalence, 2004

Total Males Females
All Sites 10,326,000 4,776,000 5,550,000
Brain & Other Nervous System 103,000 55,000 48,000
Breast 2,439,000 12,000 2,427,000
Cervix 192,000 0 192,000
Colon & Rectum 1,141,000 556,000 585,000
Endometrial Cancer
and Uterine Sarcoma
541,000 0 541,000
Esophagus 28,000 21,000 7,000
Hodgkin Disease 138,000 72,000 66,000
Kidney & Renal Pelvis 263,000 157,000 106,000
Larynx 99,000 79,000 20,000
Leukemias 219,000 124,000 94,000
Liver & Bile Duct 22,000 14,000 8,000
Lung & Bronchus 412,000 199,000 213,000
Melanoma of Skin 686,000 341,000 345,000
Multiple Myeloma 60,000 34,000 26,000
Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma 406,000 210,000 196,000
Oral Cavity & Pharynx 239,000 152,000 87,000
Ovary 166,000 0 166,000
Pancreas 32,000 15,000 17,000
Prostate 2,156,000 2,156,000 0
Stomach 66,000 38,000 28,000
Testis 161,000 161,000 0
Thyroid 338,000 77,000 261,000
Urinary Bladder 561,000 414,000 146,000
Childhood Cancer (0-19 years) 238,000 122,000 116,000


References

National Cancer Institute. SEER Cancer Statistics Review, 1975-2004. 2007. Available at: http://seer.cancer.gov/csr/1975_2004/results_merged/topic_prevcounts.pdf. Accessed December 3, 2007.

Revised: 12/03/2007

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