The present study was carried out to investigate epidemiology of pulmonary carcinoma in Japan during the period of 1960 through 1965.
1) The standardized mortality rates of pulmonary carcinoma in 46 prefectures were calculated. The rank correlation of mortality rates (W-coefficient concordance) in each year were statistically significant in both men and women (
p<0.01).
2) Age specific mortality rates (over 40 years) in 46 prefectures were calculated. Mortality rates of Hokkaido, Miyagi, Tokyo and Hyogo were significantly higher in both sexes (
p<0.05). Mortality rates of Ibaragi, Fukui, Gifu, Shizuoka and Tokushima were significantly lower (
p<0.05).
3) Occurrence of pulmonary carcinoma in cities, towns and villages was in good accordance with the Poisson distribution.
4) Seventy-one areas and 56 areas, for men and women respectively, were selected with a high occurrence at 95% confidence limits. Most of these areas belonged to the high occurrence prefectures, although a few areas were found in the low occurrence prefectures.
5) Aichi, Gifu and Mie Prefectures belonged to the lowest occurrence prefecture group. These prefectures were divided into 50 districts with a population of over 40, 000 and the mortality rates (standardized mortality rates and age specific mortality rates) were obtained in each of the 50 districts. In the most districts, incidence was low, but in 2 districts, Seto and Toba-Shima, it was higher than the average rate of the whole country.
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