Cancer mortality in Menofeia, Egypt: comparison with US mortality rates

Objectives: In developing countries where cancer registries are unavailable , mortality statistics from death certification may be a practical source o f cancer statistics. We aimed at describing the cancer mortality in Egypt a nd comparing it to that in the US. Methods: We used the mandatory and routinely available mortality records of Menofeia province in the Nile Delta region of Egypt, which is typical of t he rest of Egypt. We determined cancer mortality rates, and compared them w ith the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) mortality rates of the US. Results: Bladder and liver cancers were the two most common causes of cance r mortality in Menofeia, Egypt. When adjusted for age the Egyptian rates we re much higher than the US rates (9.5/100,000 and 8.4/100,000 for bladder a nd liver cancer, respectively, compared with 2.3/100,000 and 2.5/100,000 fo r the same cancers from SEER data). We also observed that age-specific rate s for early-onset colorectal cancer under age 40 and premenopausal breast c ancer were higher in Egypt than in the US. Conclusion: This study confirms our earlier observations about the higher p roportion of early-onset colorectal cancer in Egypt, and opens the door for future studies to investigate familial clustering of cancer in Egypt.