TEMPORAL EVOLUTION OF BREAST CANCER MORTALITY IN THE NORTHEAST REGION STATES UNDER THE EFFECTS OF AGE, PERIOD AND BIRTH COHORT
Mortality; Breast neoplasm; Age Period Cohort; Registry correction; Northeast of Brazil.
Introduction: In recent decades, Brazil has shown a significant increase in morbidity and mortality due to non-communicable chronic diseases. Among these, breast cancer is the main cause of death due to neoplasia in women, with an upward trend in the localities with the lowest socioeconomic development Objective: To assess the effects of age, period and birth cohort (APC) on the mortality by breast cancer in the states of the Northeast region from 1980 to 2016. Methods: This is a time-trend ecological study, with its population consisting in the deaths by breast cancer in women living in states in the Northeast region, age group of 20 to 24 to 80 and more years, from 1980 to 2016. The death registers were extracted from the Information System on Mortality of the Department of Information Technology of the SUS (SIM/DATASUS). In order to obtain trustworthy mortality rates, we corrected the quality and the underreporting of deaths. The rectification of the quality of information was performed through a proportional redistribution by year and age, correcting ignored age, ill-defined causes and incomplete cancer diagnosis. To correct underreporting of deaths, we used correction factors generated through the adjusted of extinct generations method. After the correction of the deaths, we calculated specific mortality rates for the age group and standardized by the direct method, with the standard population being the global population proposed by Segi. The APC effects were calculated for the deaths in the quinquennials from 1980-1984 to 2010-2014, through Poisson regression, using estimable functions: deviations, curvatures and drifts, from the Epi library of the R software version 2.32. A 5% significance level was used for all analysis. Results: From 1980 to 2016 we observed an average mortality rate of 11,88/100.000 women in the Northeast region, which increased by 63% (19.33/100,000 women) after corrections. The largest increase after corrections was observed in Maranhão (97%) and the lowest in Pernambuco (26%). Also, the highest average rates were verified in the states of Pernambuco (19.83/100,000 women) and Ceará (19,17/100,000 women) and the lowest in the states of Maranhão (11.00/100,000 women) and Piauí (13,82/100,000 women). After the estimates of the APC models, we evidencied that mortality rates increased with age, with higher death risk in the quinquennials of the years 2000 and for women born from 1950, a profile observed throughout all states in the region. Conclusions: Our findings may correlate to the increase in life expectancy in women, allied with changes in reproductive behaviors and westernization of life habits, as well as inequality in the distribution of health services.