Descriptive epidemiology of bone cancer in greater Bombay.

Bone tumours are comparatively uncommon, constituting only 0.5% of the total world cancer incidence. As Bone tumors consist of several distinct clinico-pathological entities, descriptive epidemiology of tumors at this site can be based only on studies where they can be distinguished. Ewing's sarcoma Chondrosarcoma and Osteosarcoma are the principal tumors involving bones. The basic data utilized for this study was collected from the Bombay Cancer Registry which was established in 1963, and is the first population based registry to be established in India. For studying the descriptive epidemiological variables the most recent 5 year incidence rates have been used. As a group, bone cancers represent 0.9% of the total number of incident cancer are seen in Greater Bombay. Males in general are seen to have a higher incidence of bone cancers than females. Ewing's sarcoma was found to be the commonest bone cancer in Bombay. The age specific incidence curves present striking differences according to cell types of bone cancer. Time trends in the incidence of these cancers, over the past 30 years have been presented. Our data indicate that there is a decreasing trend in incidence of bone cancers in females, whilst the rates are stable in males. Ionising radiation is the only environmental agent to cause this cancer. The discovery of other risk factors is the key prevention and will depend upon the experimental work undertaken to develop sub-clinical measures of risk that can be applied in interdisciplinary studies to identify more completely the causes of bone cancers.