Is the risk of cancer in Australia overstated? The importance of competing mortality for estimating lifetime risk.

Abstract

The objective of this analysis was to calculate lifetime risks of cancer diagnosis and cancer‐specific death, adjusted for competing mortality, and to compare these estimates with the corresponding risks published by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW). We analysed publicly available annual AIHW data on age‐specific cancer incidence and mortality — for breast cancer, colorectal cancer, prostate cancer, melanoma of the skin, and lung cancer — and all‐cause mortality in Australia, 1982–2013.