The importance of assessing and monitoring the health status of a population has grown in the last decades. Consistent and high quality data on the morbidity and mortality impact of a disease represent the key element for this assessment. | Gorasso et al. BMC Cancer 2022 22 58 https s12885-021-09109-4 RESEARCH Open Access The non-fatal burden of cancer in Belgium 2004 2019 a nationwide registry-based study Vanessa Gorasso1 2 Geert Silversmit3 Marc Arbyn1 4 Astrid Cornez1 Robby De Pauw1 5 Delphine De Smedt2 Ian Grant6 Grant M. A. Wyper6 Brecht Devleesschauwer1 7 and Niko Speybroeck8 Abstract Background The importance of assessing and monitoring the health status of a population has grown in the last decades. Consistent and high quality data on the morbidity and mortality impact of a disease represent the key element for this assessment. Being increasingly used in global and national burden of diseases BoD studies the Disability-Adjusted Life Year DALY is an indicator that combines healthy life years lost due to living with disease Years Lived with Disability YLD and due to dying prematurely Years of Life Lost YLL . As a step towards a compre- hensive national burden of disease study this study aims to estimate the non-fatal burden of cancer in Belgium using national data. Methods We estimated the Belgian cancer burden from 2004 to 2019 in terms of YLD using national population- based cancer registry data and international disease models. We developed a microsimulation model to translate inci- dence- into prevalence-based estimates and used expert elicitation to integrate the long-term impact of increased disability due to surgical treatment. Results The age-standardized non-fatal burden of cancer increased from 2004 to 2019 by 6 and 3 respectively for incidence- and prevalence-based YLDs. In 2019 in Belgium breast cancer had the highest morbidity impact among women followed by colorectal and non-melanoma skin cancer. Among men prostate cancer had the highest mor- bidity impact followed by colorectal and non-melanoma skin cancer. Between 2004 and 2019 non-melanoma skin cancer significantly increased for both sexes in terms of age-standardized incidence-based YLD per 100 000 from 49 to .
