Years of potential life lost: an evaluation of premature cancer deaths in Texas from 1981 through 1988.
Death rates are traditional public health measures used to assess the health status of a population. Several types of cancer are examined in this report, and the indicator for years of potential life lost is used to estimate the number of years of life lost per disease type in Texas during the years from 1981 through 1988. For both males and females, the resulting ranking of cancer types was quite different from those obtained with death rates. Among males, testicular cancer and Hodgkin's disease ranked first and second for years of potential life lost while lung cancer and colorectal cancer ranked first and second for deaths. Most men who die with testicular cancer are young, with each death representing an average of 42 years of life lost. Among females, each death from four cancer types--leukemia, brain, cervix uteri, and malignant melanoma skin--results in more than 20 years of lost life.
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Cancer Registry Division, Texas Department of Health, Austin 78756-3199.
D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D002423:Cause of Death; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008017:Life Expectancy / Q000639:trends; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009369:Neoplasms / Q000401:mortality*; D013781:Texas / Q000453:epidemiology