Survey-based cancer mortality in the Lao PDR, 2007-08.

BACKGROUND: The Lao PDR is a landlocked country with 5,920,000 inhabitants for which very few epidemiological studies on cancer have been performed. The aim of the present study was to examine cancer mortality in 2007-2008. METHODS: A descriptive cancer epidemiology protocol was designed with a data collection form and guideline for both demographics and list of all deaths from all 757 local Health Centers of 17 provinces/ cities. Five indicators, name, age, sex, date of death and the cause of death (ICD-10), were collected for each case. The age-specific cancer mortality rate and ASRs per 100,000 were estimated. RESULTS: There were 448 cancer cases reported from Health Centers within 7 of 17 provinces/cities. Number of person-years was 654,459 for the two-year period. Cancer mortality rates of all sites (ASR) were 116.7 and 97.2 per 100,000 in males and females, respectively. The five most common cancers causing mortality per 100,000 were liver (52.2), followed by colorectal (19.0), lung (17.3), stomach (6.9), and leukemia-lymphoma (7.2) in males and liver (28.4); followed by colorectal (19.0), lung (14.0), cervical uteri (9.2) and stomach (7.1) in females. CONCLUSIONS: Liver and colorectal cancers were the first and second most common, respectively, in both males and female.