Objective: To describe the epidemiological characteristics of bladder cancer in 2015 and temporal trends in China. Methods: From 501 cancer registries in China, we collected data of cancer new cases, deaths and populations in 2015. After qualified, sex-specific, area-specific, age-specific and overall incidence/mortality rates (including age-standardized rates by Chinese standard population and by world standard population) and estimated cases of bladder cancer were calculated. Annual Percent Change (APC)/Average Annual Percent Change (AAPC) fitted from Log-line model was applied to evaluate the temporal trends of bladder cancer incidence/mortality rates from 1998 to 2015. Results: Bladder cancer is the 13(th) most common cancer in China. The crude, age-standardized by China standard population and by world standard population rates were 5.80/10(5), 3.60/10(5) and 3.57/10(5) for incidence, and 2.37/10(5), 1.31/10(5) and 1.32/10(5) for mortality, respectively. The incidence of bladder cancer ranked 7(th) in male. The incidence and mortality of male were 3.8 and 4.0 times as high as those of female. Bladder cancer incidence in urban area was 1.4 times as high as that in rural area. Incidence in western areas and middle areas of China were similar, which were lower than that in eastern areas. Geographical distribution characteristics of mortality was along with incidence.Both incidence and mortality remained low before 45 and 55 years old, then they increased rapidly and peaked at 80-84 and over 85 years old age group. Temporal trend analysis suggested that bladder cancer incidence in China increased in 1998-2007 (APC=2.58, P<0.001), while decreased from 2007 to 2015 (APC=-3.82, P<0.001). Bladder cancer mortality declined gradually, with APCs for 1998-2003 and 2003-2015 of 3.65% (P=0.002) and 1.42% (P<0.001). Conclusions: Bladder cancer is one of the main cancers in China. Its epidemiological distributions varies among different sex, area and age group. Both incidence and mortality of bladder cancer decline. More efforts on tobacco control should be made, and awareness of early diagnosis and early treatment could be enhanced for the middle-aged and elderly.

H Z Li

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