Review

The changing global patterns of female breast cancer incidence and mortality

Freddie Bray¹ , Peter McCarron² and D Maxwell Parkin¹

¹  Unit of Descriptive Epidemiology, International Agency for Research on Cancer, Lyon, France

²  Department of Epidemiology and Public Health, Queen's University Belfast, Belfast, UK

author email corresponding author email

Breast Cancer Res 2004, 6:229-239doi:10.1186/bcr932

Published:	26 August 2004

Abstract

One in ten of all new cancers diagnosed worldwide each year is a cancer of the female breast, and it is the most common cancer in women in both developing and developed areas. It is also the principal cause of death from cancer among women globally. We review the descriptive epidemiology of the disease, focusing on some of the key elements of the geographical and temporal variations in incidence and mortality in each world region. The observations are discussed in the context of the numerous aetiological factors, as well as the impact of screening and advances in treatment and disease management in high-resource settings.