Cancer statistics: A comparison between World Health Organization (WHO) and Global Burden of Disease (GBD)

Abstract

This study aims to define comparability of 2016 statistics between Global Health Estimates (GHE) and Global Health Data Exchange (GHDx) registries for disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) and mortality of the 25 most frequent worldwide malignancies. An excellent correlation can be found between the two registries for both cancer DALYs (r=0.988) and mortality (r=0.993). Cancer-related DALYs are substantially equivalent (mean bias, -1.9%; P=0.603), while cancer mortality is modestly but significantly overestimated in GDHx (mean bias, 9.1%; P=0.004). These results suggest that cancer DALYs estimate appear almost overlapping between GHE and GHDx registries, while cancer mortality is slightly overestimated in GDHx.