[Epidemiology of primary carcinoma of the liver in Austria (author's transl)].

29 348 in patients were treated from 1945-1975 on a gastroenterological ward; 1 892 (6.47%) of these patients had cirrhosis and 183 (0.63%) carcinoma of the liver. In the groups of patients who died, resp. came to autopsy percentages were considerably higher: 17% resp. 25.6% had cirrhosis, 4.9% resp. 13% had primary carcinoma of the liver. Analysis of these data shows, that the incidence of both diseases is increasing. This seems to be due in the first line to increasing alcoholism, and only to a lesser degree, at least in Middle Europe, to viral hepatitis. Taking into account other data published in Austria concerning absolute and relative incidence of primary carcinoma of the liver it can be stated, that this malignancy ranges among the 10 most frequent tumor diseases already.