Objective: Esophageal cancer is the eighth most common cancer in the world. About 80% of cases occur in less developed regions. The study purposed to investigate the epidemiology of esophageal cancer incidence and mortality in 185 countries and its relation with HDI in 2018.

Materials and Methods: A descriptive-analytical study was developed based on cancer incidence and mortality data extraction from the World Bank for Cancer in 2018. The incidence and mortality rates and esophagus cancer distribution maps were drawn for World countries. To analyze data, correlation and regression tests were used to evaluate the relationship between the incidence and mortality with HDI. The statistical analysis was carried out by Stata-14, and the significance level was estimated at 0.05 level.

Results: The highest and the lowest esophageal cancer incidences were in the Asian continent (N=444597; 77.7%) and the Oceania continent (N=2315; 0.4%). The most esophageal cancer incidence and mortality was in high HDI regions. A negative and significant correlation was observed between incidence (R = -0.143, p <0.05) and mortality (R = 0.234, p <0.05) of esophagus cancer and HDI. Furthermore, there was a negative and significant correlation between incidence rate and LEB (r = -0.16, p <0.05). Also, the results showed a negative and significant correlation between mortality rate and GNI (r = 0.1, p <0.05), MYS (r = -0.17, p <0.05), LEB (r = -0.23, p <0.05) and EYS (r = -0.15, p <0.05).

Conclusions: There is a negative correlation between esophageal cancer incidence and mortality as well as the HDI index, improving the HDI can be effective in reducing of the cancer incidence and mortality.