Digestive tract cancers kill more than 5,600 Portuguese each year

More than 5,600 people were dying of digestive tract cancers in Portugal each year, Evaristo Sanches, president of the Digestive Tract Cancer Investigative Group (CICD), said on Sunday.

And he said there were two types of this cancer which were the biggest killers: stomach cancer, which causes 2,950 deaths, and colon cancer, which claims 2,683 lives. Together, these figures amount to 5,633 lives lost annually.

"These numbers are very worrying," he said, adding that these cancers had a higher incidence among men, both in deaths and new cases.

Portugal's 5,000 new colon cancer cases and 3,400 new stomach cancer cases represented 67 percent of all new cancer cases reported annually in the country, said Sanches.

Only prostate cancer killed more men than colon cancer, he said, adding that lung cancer and stomach cancer were the third and fourth most common causes of death among men.

As for women, colon cancer was the second most common cancerous killer, beaten only by breast cancer, Sanches said.

He added that Spain, Italy and Portugal had the highest rates of stomach cancer in Europe.

Source: Xinhua