Classification and incidence of cancers in adolescents and young adults in England 1979–1997

Abstract

Cancer patients aged 15 -24 years have distinct special needs. High quality cancer statistics are required for service planning. Data presented by primary site are inappropriate for this age group. We have developed a morphology-based classification and applied it to national cancer registration data for England 1979 -1997. The study included 25 000 cancers and 134 million person -years at risk. Rates for each diagnostic group by age, sex and time period (1979 -83, 1984 -87, 1988 -92, 1993 -1997) were calculated. Overall rates in 15 -19 and 20 -24-year-olds were 144 and 226 per million person -years respectively. Lymphomas showed the highest rates in both age groups. Rates for leukaemias and bone tumours were lower in 20 -24 year olds. Higher rates for carcinomas, central nervous system tumours, germ-cell tumours, soft tissue sarcomas and melanoma were seen in the older group. Poisson regression showed incidence increased over the study period by an average of 1.5% per annum (P50.0001). Significant increases were seen in non-Hodgkins lymphoma (2.3%), astrocytoma (2.3%), germ-cell tumours (2.3%), melanoma (5.1%) and carcinoma of the thyroid (3.5%) and ovary (3.0%). Cancers common in the elderly are uncommon in adolescents and young adults. The incidence of certain cancers in the latter is increasing. Future studies should be directed towards aetiology.

Cancer incidence patterns by region and socioeconomic deprivation in teenagers and young adults in England

“…Furthermore, these earlier studies grouped cases by ICD, which uses mainly primary site to classify cancers. As such a classification is inappropriate to cancers in the TYA age group, we developed a more suitable morphology-based classification (Birch et al, 2002) and this has been applied here.…”

Changes in cancer incidence in teenagers and young adults (ages 13 to 24 years) in England 1979‒2003

“…1 The age range from 13 to 24 years was chosen because the distribution of cancer types in individuals ages 13 and 14 years is closer to that of older teenagers and adults aged < 24 years 8 than the distribution in younger children and infants. All cases of malignancies except carcinoma of the skin were included.…”

“…1 Incidence by region and socioeconomic deprivation also has been studied. 3 This report expands the time frame, age range, and histologic detail of those analyses and also looks at how the changes over time vary by sex, age group, and geographic area.…”

“…Such an approach is applied through use of a specialized teenage and young adult cancer diagnostic classification scheme. 1,2 The use of this hierarchical scheme enables patients to be grouped appropriately throughout the analyses.…”

Patient-Reported Measures of Hearing Loss and Tinnitus in Pediatric Cancer and Hematopoietic Stem Cell Transplantation: A Systematic Review

“…However, it is not known whether reliable and valid PROs of hearing outcomes are available in pediatric cancer. It is particularly relevant to measure hearing PROs in adolescents and young adults (AYAs), in addition to children, because this population is at risk for germ cell tumor and osteosarcoma, which are commonly treated with platinum agents (Birch et al, 2002;Bleyer & Barr, 2009). Further, there is a lack of available instrumentation to measure PROs, in general, across the AYA age spectrum because most instruments have been validated in children or adults separately but rarely across the AYA continuum (Taylor et al, 2015).…”