OBJECTIVETo understand the trend of gastric cancer mortality based on the exploration of the death data from 1970 to 2004 in Zhaoyuan County.

METHODSThe death data of 1970-1974 were collected from the first malignant tumor death survey of China, and the data of 1985-2004 were derived from the cancer registration network of Zhaoyuan. The appreciation indexes were crude mortality rate and standardized mortality rates by the percentages of Chinese population in 1982 and the percentages of world population in 1966.

RESULTSThe crude mortality rates in the five periods of 1970-1974, 1985-1989, 1990-994, 1995-1999, and 2000-2004 were 34.94, 44.34, 40.05, 48.73, and 40.18 per 100,000, respectively; the standardized mortality rates by Chinese population were 30.82, 30.35, 27.78, 31.63, and 20.10 per 100,000, respectively. The gastric cancer mortality remained stability from 1970 to 1999, however, the standardized mortality rate of gastric cancer in 2000-2004 declined by 34.8% compared with that in 1970-1974. The study also observed that the highest age-specific gastric cancer mortality, in the past 35 years, has been postponed by 10 years. And, the gastric cancer mortality ranked from top first to top three.

CONCLUSIONThere is a decreasing trend for the incidence of stomach cancer and this might be associated with the changes of dietary consumption and pattern.