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Oesophageal carcinoma is a relatively rare disease with a
dismal prognosis. During 2007-2011 about 11 in 100’000
men (or 392 in total) and about 4 in 100’000 women (128
in total) were diagnosed each year with oesophageal cancer,
while the yearly death toll due to the disease was 9
in 100’000 men (327 in total) and 3 in 100’000 women
(106 in total). Age-adjusted incidences rates for cancer
of the oesophagus have been increasing in Switzerland for
both sexes since the beginning of cancer registration in
the late Seventies and early Eighties of the 20th Century,
with recent signs of levelling off, while mortality rates are
steadily declining in men, but remaining stable in women. Disease risk is considerably higher in men and moderately
higher in the French- or Italian-speaking part of
Switzerland. Both, the sex-speci!c and the region-speci!c
age-adjusted risk ratios have declined over time from initially
5.0 to 3.8 for men versus women and from 2.0 to
1.4 for French-/Italian- versus German-speaking region,
respectively.
In the present descriptive study, epidemiological information
from tumour registries of seventeen Swiss cantons
have been collapsed to examine the survival patterns of
patients diagnosed with malignant primary cancer of the
oesophagus during the last 30 years.