U.S. Trends in Carcinoma of the Cervix: Incidence, Mortality and Survival

Trends in cervical cancer in the United States are best expressed by incidence rates. Cancer incidence rates are defined as the annual rate of newly diagnosed cases within a specific population and are usually expressed as the number of cases per 100,000 persons in the population. In general, incidence data are considered the most useful type of descriptive measure because they reflect the probability of the development of a disease within a population and its sub-groups (Lillienfeld 1967). For carcinoma of the cervix in the United States, one can understand trends only through incidence data, since more than 75% of all cases are diagnosed as in situ disease.