Until recently no attempt has been made to measure overall cancer incidence in Korea. Neverthless, the cancer trends during the years 1967~1974 had been estimated by analysis of relative frequencies as determined by the hospital records. Rapid changes in size and structure of cancer patients in the Cancer Hospital ask for rather short periods of observation for estimating cancer trends. In this study, the records of cancer patients admitted to the Cancer Hospital for the year of 1975 and 1976 have also been sorted and counted to obtain whether impressive alterations have occured in the pattern of relative frequencies of common cancer in Korea. The patterns revealed a number of different trends for individual sites, some of which showed successively increasing relative frequency, some decreasing, and others were of a more equivocal charactor. A decreasing trend was observed in cancer of the uterus, whereas an increasing trend was observed in the frequency of cancer of the stomach. No evidence has been found to indicate that changes in relative frequency of the stomach cancer was due to increased incidence. To demonstrate whether the progressive increase in relative frequency of the stomach cancer was due to inncreased incidence. To demonstrate whether the progressive increase in relative frequency of the stomach cancer could be explained on the basis of a patient composition, gradual shift in urbanity was identified in each of the four calender years 1971,1974,1975,and 1976.
The progressive increase of rural patient was observed and rural people shown more stomach cancer as compared to the urban people. It was suggested that impressive decrease in the pattern of the cervix cancer was due to improved socioeconomic standing, hygience and public education. It was, however, also noteworthy that cervix cancer is still noted highest in female neoplasms. During short periods, no evidence of significant changes in relative frequencies of both the breast and lung cancer that revealed sharp rise until 1974 were observed. Author discussed that the nation wide survey of the stomach cancer for the years of 1973-1975 and the cervix cancer for the years of 1970-1972 might be effecting on the trends of both highest tumors.
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