01 February 2013
Cancer has become Britain’s greatest health risk, with an average British boy born in 2010 running a 44% chance of being diagnosed with any form of cancer during his lifetime. The risk for a baby girl is slightly lower at 40%.
A landmark report brought out by Cancer Research UK and the National Cancer Intelligence Network on Tuesday has found that British men are at significantly greater risk of both developing and dying from nearly all of the common cancers that occur in both sexes (with the exception of breast cancer).
Overall, for all cancers combined, 39% of men are expected to survive their cancer for at least 10 years after their diagnosis compared with 51% of women.
However, this survival gap is likely to be driven by there being around 9,0008 more females getting breast cancer with a good prognosis (10-year survival of 77%) than there are males getting prostate cancer (with 10-year survival of 69%).
According to the report, men are over 35% more likely to die from cancer than women in the UK. The report showed that 202 men per 100,000 died from cancer compared to 147 per 100,000 women in 2010. And this difference is even starker when breast cancer and sex-specific cancers such as prostate, testicular and ovarian cancers are removed from the analysis – men were then 67% more likely to die from the disease.
The analysis also showed that men are almost twice as likely as women to die from liver cancer and almost three times as likely to die from oesophageal cancer. This contrast in cancer death rates between the sexes may be down to more men being diagnosed with types of cancers that are harder to treat such as cancers of the bladder, liver and oesophagus.