LUNG CANCER MOST COMMON FORM OF PREVENTABLE DEATH

 Cyprus Mail 18 August 2020 - by Annette Chrysostomou

In Cyprus, as in the rest of the EU, lung cancer is the most common cause of preventable death among people aged below 75, according to figures released by Eurostat.

These show that in 2016, 1.5 million people aged below 75 died in the EU, out of which two-thirds (1.0 million) could be considered as premature, according to the Eurostat-OECD list of avoidable mortality.

These deaths could have been avoided through effective public health and primary prevention interventions (preventable deaths) or through timely and effective health care interventions (treatable deaths).

In the EU, the most common causes of death from treatable diseases/conditions among people under 75 years of age were ischaemic heart diseases (death rate of 18.9 per 100,000 inhabitants under 75), colorectal cancer (15.1), breast cancer (female only 10.9), cerebrovascular diseases (10.0) and pneumonia (5.2). In 2016, these five causes accounted for 65 per cent of all deaths from treatable diseases/conditions in the EU.

In Cyprus and 18 other 27 EU Member States, ischaemic heart disease recorded the highest death rate in 2017 for people aged below 75.

In seven others – Belgium, Denmark, Spain, France (2016 data), Italy, the Netherlands and Portugal – the highest death rate was for colorectal cancer, while in Bulgaria, the highest was for cerebrovascular diseases.

In the EU, lung cancer (37.1 per 100 000 inhabitants under 75 years), ischaemic heart diseases (18.9), alcohol-specific disorders and poisonings (11.7), cerebrovascular diseases and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (both 10.0) were the five most common causes of preventable death among people aged below 75, accounting for 55 per cent of all such deaths in 2016.

In 2017, among these five leading causes of preventable deaths, lung cancer had the highest death rate for people aged below 75 in 20 of the 27 EU Member States. Latvia, Lithuania, Romania and Slovakia recorded the highest rate of preventable deaths for ischaemic heart disease, while Estonia and Finland registered the highest rate for alcohol-specific disorders and poisonings. Bulgaria had the highest rate of preventable deaths for cerebrovascular diseases.