Prognose van de kankerincidentie in Nederland

– In October 1984 a committee of the Health Council of the Netherlands issued a report on present and future needs for radiotherapy. As part of this report a projection of the cancer incidence in the Netherlands was made. This projection was based on cancer incidence data from the South-East region of the Netherlands and on national demographic data obtained from the Netherlands Central Bureau of Statistics. A projection was also made for the incidence of lung cancer in men and of breast cancer in women.

In this paper the most relevant data are presented. In the discussion attention is paid to several factors causing uncertainties with respect to these projections. It is concluded that we may expect a considerable increase in the cancer incidence in the Netherlands in the coming decades from an estimated level of over 45,000 cancers in 1980.