Cancer diagnoses rise in Taiwan, following lull during COVID

Taipei, Dec. 19 (CNA) The number of new cancer cases in Taiwan rose in 2022 after a rare drop during the COVID-19 pandemic, with lung and colorectal cancers remaining the most diagnosed varieties, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said Thursday.

A total of 130,293 people were diagnosed with various types of cancer in 2022, an increase of 8,531 over 2021 and equal to one new case every 4 minutes and 2 seconds, the HPA said in its annual report on domestic cancer trends.

Lin Li-ju (林莉茹), head of the HPA's Cancer Prevention and Control Division, told a news conference that the number of new cancer diagnoses in Taiwan rose by between 4,000 and 6,000 per year from 2017 to 2019.

As the COVID-19 pandemic began, however, the annual increase in diagnoses slowed to 725 more cases in 2020, while in 2021, the number of new cases decreased for the first time since the SARS outbreak in 2003, Lin said.

Lin said the drop in 2021, when fewer people did cancer screenings or went for their regular checkups, also drove the rise in cases in 2022, as things got back to normal.

The most common types of cancer diagnosed in 2022, the most recent year for which detailed cancer data has been compiled, were lung cancer, colorectal cancer, breast cancer and liver cancer.

Rounding out the top 10 were prostate cancer, oral cancer, thyroid cancer, stomach cancer, skin cancer and endometrial cancer.

The list was largely similar to 2021, when lung cancer became the most common cancer variety, replacing colorectal cancer, which was the most common from 2006 to 2020.

The median age for new cancer diagnoses was 64 years old, although several types of the disease were typically found at a younger age, including oral cancer (59), endometrial cancer (56), breast cancer (57) and thyroid cancer (50), according to the HPA.

In terms of diagnoses by gender, males accounted for 67,299 of the new cases (342.3 new cases per 100,000 males), with the three most common types being colorectal cancer (9,989 cases), lung cancer (9,417 cases) and prostate cancer (9,062 cases).

Females accounted for 62,994 of the cases (311.2 new cases per 100,000 females), of which breast cancer was by far the most common (17,366 cases), followed by lung cancer (8,565 cases) and colorectal cancer (7,654 cases).

In its report, the HPA reminded the public to keep up with their regular cancer screenings, since early detection often makes it easier to successfully treat the disease.