Trends in the incidence of testicular germ cell cancer in a 300.000 inhabitants Spanish population (1991-2005)

Objective: To describe the features and the time trends of the testicular cancer in a spanish population. Materials and methods: Data on incident cases of testicular germ cell cancer diagnosed in our population were extracted from the Cancer Registry of our Department. We calculed annual incidence rates of testicular cancer, the Spanish population-adjusted annual percent change (APC), age of diagnosis and the different histologic types frequencies. Results: The overall incidence rate rose from 0.84 per 100,000 males to 1.91 per 100,000 males from 1991 till 2005, with a peak of 6.77 per 100,000 males in 2003. The Spanish population-adjusted APC was 2.39%. By histologic subgroup. for seminomas: the incidence rate varied from 0.84 per 100,000 males to 0.64 per 100,000 (1991-2005), with a peak of 5.41 per 100,000 in 2003 and the Spanish population-adjusted APC was 6.06. For nonseminomas, the incidence rate varied from 1.66 per 100,000 to 1.28 per 100,000 (1992-2005), with a peak of 3.65 per 100.000 in 2001 and the Spanish population-adjusted APC was 12.74. Mean ages were 31.23 years (median 30, SD 8.56) for seminomas, and 23.68 years (median 25, SD 6.85) for nonseminomas, with statistic significance (p 0.0001). Discussion: The increasing testicular cancer incidence observed for this population follows the time trends showed in other European countries.