In 2023, the Polish National Cancer Registry received data on almost 193 thousand new cancer cases and over 99,7 thousand cancer-related deaths. Malignant neoplasms are the second leading cause of death in Poland, causing 26% of all male deaths and 23% of all female deaths in 2023. They constitute a significant health problem, especially in young and middle-aged people (aged 25-64 years).

This phenomenon is especially evident in the female population, where, for years, neoplasms have remained the most frequent cause of death before the age of 65, accounting for 31% of deaths among young women and 45% of deaths among middle-aged women (45–64 years). Among older people (> 65 years of age), cancer mortality accounts for nearly one-third of deaths in men and one-fifth in women.

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Cancer in Poland

The long-term trends observed in the morbidity and mortality of malignant neoplasms in Poland are determined both by the age structure of the population and by changes in the Polish population’s exposure to carcinogenic factors, mainly linked to cigarette smoking (in 2024, the percentage of men and women who smoke became equal – 21% of adults smoke cigarettes). In 2023, once again the number of women who died from lung cancer exceeded the number of women who died from breast cancer (by 22%).

The most common male cancer is prostate cancer, accounting for 23,3% of all cancer cases in this group. It is characterized by the greatest dynamics of morbidity growth while mortality rates maintained a plateau at the turn of the century, although mortality has shown an increasing trend since 2014. Malignant lung neoplasms are the second most common cancer among men (1/8 of all male cancer cases). They remain the dominant cause of cancer death in men (one-quarter of all cancer deaths) and dictate the overall course of the mortality curve representing all male cancer diseases. For over 20 years, a decline in lung cancer morbidity and mortality has been observed in the male population, which is primarily associated with the decrease in the percentage of male smokers in recent decades. The third most frequent cancer (11.4% of cases) is colorectal cancer (colon and rectum), which has exhibited a newly favorable trend in both morbidity and mortality since 2015.

In the female population, the leading cancer sites remain the breast, colorectum (colon and rectum), lung, and corpus uteri. Lung neoplasms hold the first position among cancer causes of death in women (18.6%), surpassing breast neoplasms (14.6%). Dominant breast cancers in women were characterised by steadily increasing morbidity over the past half-century. Mortality trends for breast cancer have changed several times over the last forty years. The initial increase in mortality was arrested in the mid-1990s, followed by a decline in mortality from 1996 to 2010. An unfavorable trend change occurred between 2010 and 2019; however, the slow decline in mortality observed since 2019 may herald a positive shift. The third most common cause of malignant cancer death in women over the past few years remains colorectal cancer (11.5%).

source: The „Cancer in Poland 2023” bulletin, Polish National Cancer Registry
authors: Joanna A. Didkowska, Urszula Wojciechowska, Michalina Irzyk, Maciej Rogalski, Paweł Olasek, Agnieszka Jawołowska, Patrycja Filipek, Marcin Dybek

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