Epidemiology
Around 208,500 new cases of kidney cancer are diagnosed in the world each year, accounting for just under 2% of all cancers. The highest rates are recorded in Northern America and the lowest rates in Asian and African regions.
In the United States in 2008, there were around 54,390 new cases of kidney cancer and 13,010 deaths from the disease. 2005. In the UK, 8,757 people were diagnosed with kidney cancer in 2008, and the disease caused 3,848 deaths.
The most recent estimates of incidence of kidney cancer suggest that there are 63,300 new cases annually in the EU25. In Europe, kidney cancer accounts for nearly 3% of all cancer cases.
In the UK kidney cancer is the eighth most common cancer in men (5,377 new cases diagnosed in 2008), and the ninth most common cancer in women (3,380 new cases in 2008), giving a male:female ratio of over 3:2. The number of cases of kidney cancer in men in the UK has doubled from 7 per 100,000 to 14.8 per 100,000 between 1975-1977 and 2006-2008. In women the rates have more than doubled over the same period, rising from 3.2 to 7.5 per 100,000.
The incidence of kidney cancer is also increasing in the United States. This is thought to be a real increase, not only due to changes in the way the disease is diagnosed.
Read more about this topic: Kidney Cancer