2.2.5 International Cancer Incidence Data

Estimates of cancer incidence rates in 19 (mainly European) countries, of a level of economic development comparable to Ireland, were taken from the GLOBOCAN 2008 dataset (Ferlay et al., 2008). Data for NI is included in that for the UK in this dataset, so the incidence rates shown for both NI and RoI are based on 2005-2007 data from the respective cancer registry. For this reason, the ranking of RoI and NI relative to each other shown in these figures is not always the same as that shown in the summary section, or in the sections for each cancer titled “Small geographic area characteristics and cancer risk”. It should also be noted that, although countries are shown as ranked in descending order of incidence rates, the differences in rates between countries were often quite small and may not be statistically significant.

For some cancers, the definition of cancer site used in GLOBOCAN differed slightly from that used in this atlas. In these cases international comparisons between Ireland and other countries are based upon the GLOBOCAN definition. The exception to this was non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, where the ICD code C96 was included in the GLOBOCAN definition, but omitted from the NI and RoI figures. A footnote to the comparison graphs is provided to indicate where such differences occur.