ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND: Since most of epidemiologic studies of cancer disease in Korea are on the basis of data from large hospitals in metropolitan area, they neither represent the separate district, nor reflect the characters of rural area. We aimed to help prevent cancer and present control strategies in good accordance with regional features by evaluating the epidemiologic characters of cancers and performing a comparative study between urban and rural area. METHODS: We retrospectively reviewed the medical records of newly diagnosed cancer patients from January 1997 to December 2000 in Gangneung Asan Hospital, who resided in Gangneung city on diagnosis and investigated their pathologic results, radiologic findings, risk factors, stages, treatment modalities, etc. On the basis of them, we estimated incidence rates including crude rates and age standardized rates and compaed the differences between urban and rural area. RESULTS: The numbers of newly diagnosed cancer patients during this period were 367 in gastric cancer, 186 in hepatoma and 177 in lung cancer. The age standardized annual incidence rates of gastric cancer were estimated to be 49.7/17.8 (M/F) in urban area and 52.7/25.9 (M/F) in rural area per 100,000 persons. In hepatoma, the rates were 28.4/6.3 in urban and 36.3/6.5 in rural area and in the case of lung cancer, 23.5/6. 1 in urban and 32.0/7.4 in rural area. As a consequence, the age standardized annual incidence rates of rural area were higher than those of urban area in all the three cancers and the diffences were statistically significant except female hepatoma and lung cancer. However, risk factor survey among cancer patients revealed only difference in the amount of alcohol consumption associated with hepatoma, between urban and rural area. CONCLUSION: In rural area, the age standardized incidence rates were significantly higher than those of urban area in Gangneung city except female hepatoma and lung cancer. Moreover, in rural area, cancers were detected as more advanced state. Hence, preventive measures fit for these features were required urgently. In addition, more investigations about risk factors were needed to discover the cause of difference, including environmental and host factors which were not covered in this study.