The global burden of urinary bladder cancer: an update

Abstract

Bladder cancer is among the top ten most common cancer types in the world, with approximately 550,000 new cases annually. The highest burden of bladder cancer is currently falling on most developed communities across the globe. But with an anticipated shift in world demographics with growing and aging populations mainly on the African continent, and important shifts in exposure to different risk factors across the world, this is likely to change over the next decades. In this review, we provide an overview of the current incidence, mortality, prevalence, survival, risk factors and costs of bladder cancer worldwide.

Keywords: Global burden; Incidence; Mortality; Prevalence; Urinary bladder cancer.

Fig. 1

Urinary bladder cancer incidence in 2018 in the world, by sex

Fig. 2

Risk of developing urinary bladder cancer for males (a) and females (b) in the US. Based on data from the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results Program (SEER), US, 2014–2016, all races, males and females [12]. Examples of interpretation: a 50-year old man has an average risk of 0.28% to be diagnosed with bladder cancer before his 60th birthday. A 60-year old woman has an average risk of 1.15% to be diagnosed with bladder cancer in the remainder of her life

Fig. 3

Urinary bladder cancer mortality across the world in 2018, by sex

Fig. 4

Five-year relative survival of urinary bladder cancer patients in European countries by sex. Data from EUROCARE-5 based on 429,154 cases of bladder cancer (ICD-O-3 topography C67, including non-invasive tumors) diagnosed between 2000 and 2007 with follow-up until 2008 from 86 population-based cancer registries from 29 European countries [14]. Relative survival rates are age-standardized. Error bars represent 95% confidence limits. Survival estimates from Scotland and The Netherlands reflect only invasive bladder cancer

Fig. 5

Five-year urinary bladder cancer prevalence rates in 2018 in the World, by sex

Fig. 6

Smoking prevalence trends over time by sex and HDI/world region in a men and b women. Smoking defined as daily or occasional tobacco smoking. Smoking prevalence by sex was extracted from the Global Health Observatory data repository of the World Health Organization [34]. Human Development Index (HDI) per country was derived from the listing of the United Nations Development Programme’s Human Development Report of 2018 based on data of 2017. A weighted average across countries per HDI level/world region was calculated based on the population size of each country derived from the United Nations Population Division of 2018