A disease in which malignant (cancer) cells are found in the tissues of the pancreas. It also called as exocrine cancer. Prostate cancer: Cancer that forms in tissues of the prostate (a gland in the male reproductive system found below the bladder and in front of the rectum). Prostate cancer usually occurs in older men. Prostate cancer is the most common cancer, excluding skin cancer, and the second leading cause of cancer-related death in men in the United States.
African American men have higher incidence and at least double the mortality rates compared to men of other racial and ethnic groups. Prostate cancer incidence rates rose dramatically in the late 1980s. This increase reflects improvements in detection and diagnosis through widespread use of prostate-specific antigen (PSA) testing, which received initial U. S. Food and Drug Administration approval in 1986.
Since the early 1990s, prostate cancer incidence has been declining. Mortality rates for prostate cancer have also declined since the early 1990s. Below are the graphs of various cancer death rates in the US between 1930 and 2001. And the various cancer mortality rates for a particular state (e. g. : Michigan) can be shown as below in the years 1970 and 1994 where lung, trachea, bronchus and pleura cancers are the major death causing cancers. Geographic information system
Recently, the North American Association of Central Cancer Registries (NAACCR) formed a Geographic Information Systems (GIS) Task Force that prepared a handbook to aid cancer registry staff in using GIS for the collection, analysis, and presentation of cancer registry data. GIS is a System of computer software, hardware and data, and personnel to help manipulate, analyze and present information that is tied to a spatial location – • spatial location – usually a geographic location • information – visualization of analysis of data
• system – linking software, hardware, data • personnel – a thinking explorer who is key to the power of GIS Current practices in cancer spatial data analysis Today increasing recognition that all health data are spatial, i. e. , referenced to place is in demand. A recent call for more widespread use of GIS in the U. K. National Health Service points out that GIS could “act as powerful evidence-based practice tools for early problem detection and solving”. Many health outcomes are related to an individual’s “environment” at both the personal and community levels.
Personal environmental factors include not only the obvious water, soil, and air content and exposure to hazardous materials, but also lifestyle factors, such as exposure to tobacco smoke (personal and environmental), occupation, transportation choices, hobbies, and characteristics of the home. Community effects, referred to as “neighborhood social context” in the social sciences literature, have been shown to impact health care policy, delivery, utilization and outcomes. Even within a specific geographic area, health care often varies among subgroups of residents, leading to the important study of health disparities.