The future incidence of colorectal and lung cancers. Results of the calculation of different scenarios for the year 2020

Cancer is a common disease that places a large burden on health-care systems. Although the rise of incident cancer cases over recent decades in Germany can largely be explained by demographic ageing, other factors also affect these numbers. The aim of this work was to calculate the incidence of colorectal and lung cancers, two of the most common cancer sites, for the year 2020 under different scenarios. The calculations were based on national incidence estimates by the Centre for Cancer Registry Data at the Robert Koch Institute. Two scenarios were calculated for each of the two cancer sites and by gender. The status quo scenario accounts only for demographic ageing, assuming constant age-specific incidence rates. The second scenario additionally assumes that trends in incidence rates observed from 2000 to 2009 continue up to the year 2020. The status quo scenarios showed an increase in incident cancer cases of between 12 and 24 %, depending on gender and cancer site. The continuing trends scenarios resulted in smaller increases for colorectal cancer (+ 3 to + 17 %), while the results for lung cancer differed widely between women (+ 64 %) and men (+ 2 %). In general, large increases are expected for the highest age groups and the age groups of the baby boomer generation. Changes in the age structure of the German population will lead to an increase in incident cancer cases and a higher portion of geriatric patients. Additionally, further increasing incidence rates would result in a dramatic growth in the number of female lung cancer patients.