Cancer was also the second most common cause of death in Germany in 2022. As the Federal Statistical Office announced on Friday on the occasion of World Cancer Day this Sunday, 231,533 people died of the disease last year. That was a good 20,000 more patients than 20 years ago. However, the proportion of deaths from cancer in total fell from 25 to 21.7 percent over the same period. According to statisticians, the increase in the number of people dying from cancer is due, among other things, to the increase and aging of the population.
Thanks to improvements in prevention, screening and treatment, the number of inpatient cancer treatments fell from 1.56 million in 2002 to 1.4 million patients in 2022. This is the lowest level in 20 years. The most common cause of death, with 358,200 deaths, was diseases of the circulatory system. They were also the reason for most inpatient treatments (15 percent), ahead of injuries, poisonings and other consequences of external causes and diseases of the digestive system (around ten percent each). Eight percent of all inpatient treatments were due to cancer.
Almost a fifth of all cancer-related deaths were caused by lung and bronchial cancer (45,200), followed by colon cancer (24,300), pancreatic cancer (19,200), breast cancer (19,100) and prostate cancer (15,600). A good 54 percent of those who died from cancer were men and 46 percent were women. People between the ages of 60 and 79 (54 percent) are particularly often treated in hospital for cancer. A fifth (20 percent) were aged 40 to 59, and another 20 percent were 80 years or older.
Elisa Rijntjes Published/Updated: Recommendations: 9 Hinnerk Feldwisch-Drentrup Published/Updated: Recommendations: 5 Sascha Zoske Published/Updated: Recommendations: 52
Younger people, on the other hand, are rarely treated for cancer: only five percent of cancer patients were under 40 years old. Cancer was the most common cause of death for people aged 40 to 74: more than one in three deaths (35 percent) in this age group were the result of cancer.