How many women in Grampian get diagnosed with colorectal cancer?

How many people in the North East of Scotland get diagnosed with colorectal (also known as bowel cancer or colon cancer) cancer every year?

The NHS Information Services Division collect this information and analyse the statistics. They produce a report that is updated regularly. You can find lots of information on all types of cancer in the “Cancer in Scotland Summary“. I’ve taken these numbers from two different sources, the April 2009 “Cancer in Scotland Summary” and the “Incidence by Local Council Area“. Be warned, only look at these pages if you like scrolling through pages and pages of Excel spreadsheets…

Grampian has a population of around half a million people (539, 795 people).  NHS Grampian is made up of three areas; Aberdeen City (which has 202,370 people); Aberdeenshire (which has 235,440 people) and Moray (which has 88,120 people).

In 2002, 75 women in Aberdeen City were diagnosed with colorectal cancer. A similar number will have been diagnosed every year since then. Also in 2002, 76 women in Aberdeenshire and 34 women in Moray were diagnosed with colorectal cancer (the numbers for Aberdeen City and Aberdeenshire are similar, because they have a similar number of people).  Moray, has less people which explains why there are less cases of breast cancer diagnosed there than in Aberdeen City or Aberdeenshire.

We can work out the total number of cases of colorectal cancer diagnosed in Grampian in 2002 by adding these total (75+76+34=185).  185 women diagnosed with colorectal cancer is about 0.03% of Grampians total population.

* Average annual incidence 1998-2002

How does this compare with Scotland as a whole?  Well, your risk of any cancer gets higher as you get older. This is because the longer you live, the more likely your cells are to get damaged.  Damaged cells can keep growing when they shouldn’t and this can (sometimes) give you cancer.

If you are a woman, in Scotland, aged 64 years or younger you have a 1% (or 1 in 90) chance of getting colorectal cancer.  If you live to be 79 years (the average life expectancy for a woman in Scotland) then you have a 4.5% (or 1 in 22) chance of getting colorectal cancer.

If you have been diagnosed with bowel cancer, you can get more information from Macmillan, from Cancer Research UK (they have a quick links section if you are looking for a specific bit of information) from the charity Beating Bowel Cancer or from Bowel Cancer UK.