Objective: Stomach cancer is one of the most common cancers in the worldwide and the second most common cause of cancer-induced deaths after lung cancer. The aim of this study was to investigate epidemiology of stomach cancer incidence and mortality in 185 countries and its relationship with HDI index in 2018.
Materials and Methods: This study is a descriptive-analytic study that is based on extraction of cancer incidence and mortality data from World Bank Cancer in 2018. The incidence and mortality rates and stomach cancer distribution maps were drawn for world countries. To analyze data, correlation test and regression tests were used to evaluate the correlation between incidence and mortality with HDI. The statistical analysis was carried out by Stata-14 and the significance level was estimated at the level of 0.05.
Results: Stomach cancer, with 1033701 cases (5.7% of all cancers), was the fifth most common cancer in 2018, with the highest incidence and mortality related to the Asia continent and Eastern Asia region. There was a positive and significant correlation between incidence of stomach cancer and HDI index (R=0.218, p<0.05). While the correlation between stomach cancer mortality index and HDI (R=0.008, p>0.05) was not statistically significant. Also, there was a positive and significant correlation between the incidence of stomach cancer with MYS (r=0.19, p<0.05), LEB (r=0.22, p<0.05) and EYS (r=0.25, p<0.05) and there was a negative and significant correlation with GNI (r=-0.19, p<0.05).
Conclusions: Considering that stomach cancer is the second leading cause of death worldwide, it is important to investigate the risk factors of this disease in the countries of the world. According to the results of this study, paying attention to the development index can be effective in reducing the mortality rate of stomach cancer.