High Gastric Cancer Mortality and Years of Life Lost in Nicaragua: A Population-Based Study 1997 to 2012.

Background: Gastric adenocarcinoma is the fourth leading cause of cancer-related mortality and leading infection-associated cancer. Gastric adenocarcinoma has striking geographic variability, with high incidence in East Asia and mountainous Latin America. Reliable cancer data and population-based cancer registries are lacking for the majority of low- and middle-income countries, including the Central American Four region (CA-4, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala).

Methods: Mortality data for Nicaragua were obtained from the highly rated Ministry of Health death registry. All the patients were diagnosed with gastric cancer between 1997 and 2012 (ICD-10 codes, C16.0-C16.9) and death due to any cause were included in the study. Data on variables such as sex, age (stratified by 5-year age groups), municipality, urban/rural, altitude, and year of death were analyzed.

Results: A total of 3,886 stomach cancer deaths were reported in Nicaragua between 1997 and 2012, of which 2,214 (56.9%) were male. The age-standardized mortality rates were 13.1 and 8.7 per 100,000 habitants for males and females, respectively, and without significant change during the study period (annual percentage change = -0.7, P = 0.2). An average of 17.9 years were lost per death, accounting for 67,964 years of life lost (YLL).

Conclusions: The burden of gastric cancer mortality is high in Nicaragua with a significantly elevated age-standardized mortality rate, YYL, and average YLL.

Impact: The projected increase in mortality portends the double cancer burden in northern Central America, with persistent infection-associated cancers and growing transition cancers (e.g., breast and colon cancers), which has implications for cancer control in Mesoamerica and US Latino populations. See related commentary by Riquelme and Abnet, p. 1550.