anal cancer

There were12,500 new cases of esophagus cancer and 11,000 deaths attribute-

bale to the disease in 1996. It Accounts for 5% of Gastrointestinal cancers and about 1% of all new cancers in the U.S.A. The overall number of cases each year is steadily increasing. In some places, like Northern China, it is 10 times more common than in North America. It is the 7th most common cancer worldwide. In the U.S.A. men are affected more than twice as commonly as women, and Black men 3 times as often as White men. The average patient is 60 years old.The most common type had always been "squamous cell carcinoma" arising from

the upper 2/3 of the esophagus. Now, however, there has been a dramatic increase in another type, called "adenocarcinoma", which tends to arise in the lower 1/3 of the esophagus. Currently, the number of each of these two types of cancer cases is about equal, and together they make up nearly 100% of today's esophagus cancers. White men tend to get the disease more commonly in the lower esophagus, while Black men get it in the middle and upper esophagus.



There are occasional rare cancers found in the esophagus, such as "sarcomas" which arise from the muscular wall, "cylindroma" which begins from glands, and "lymphoma" that starts from the body's immune system cells within the esophagus.