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Is cancer epidemiology different in Western Europe to that in Eastern Europe?

There are great regional differences in cancer incidence and mortality overall and at specific organ sites in the world [1] and in Europe [2]. This article examines the geographic variations in cancer burden in 2002 and reviews the published evidence to explain the differences. Cancer incidence and mortality estimates for 2002 are from the GLOBOCAN database [3]. In this database, European countries are divided into four regions: northern, eastern, southern and western. The grouping of European countries is different in several databases [3, 4], each serving its special purpose. For this review, European countries have been regrouped into north-western (Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Malta, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, The Netherlands, UK) and central-eastern (Albania, Belarus, Bosnia Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Croatia, Estonia, FYR Macedonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Hungary, Moldova, Poland, Romania, Russian Federation, Slovakia, Slovenia, Serbia and Montenegro, Ukraine). The latter includes predominantly countries from the former socialist block.