Trends in the incidence of oral cancer in Saudi Arabia from 1994 to 2015

BACKGROUND: Oral cancer is one of the most common non-communicable diseases worldwide. This paper presents an evaluation of the trends and geographical distributions of oral cancers in the Saudi Arabian population. METHODS: Data from Saudi Cancer Registry reports were used in this analysis, which assessed the period between 1994 and 2015. All cancer cases are recorded in these reports, as well as the age, gender, region and histological cancer sites for each patient. Age-standardised and age-specific incidence rates were calculated in these reports. For the purposes of this paper, only cancers of the lips, tongue and mouth were considered oral cancers. RESULTS: Between 1994 and 2015, the Saudi Cancer Registry identified 172,424 cancer cases in total. Of these, 3184 were oral cancer. The mean age-standardised rate of oral cancer for the study period was 2.9 per 100,000 people; for females, it was 1.5, and for males, it was 1.4. The incidence of oral cancer varied by region, with Jazan displaying the highest age-standardised rate and Hail displaying the lowest. A positive correlation was observed between oral cancer incidence and age. CONCLUSION: The overall trend of the age-standardised rate for both sexes remained constant from 1994 to 2015. However, the oral cancer incidence in Saudi Arabia varies by region. Studying this variation in more detail will help to guide awareness programmes in the regions that are most in need.