Brain cancer mortality in the United States, 1986 to 1995: A geographic analysis

Abstract

The Atlas of Cancer Mortality in the United States, 1950-94 (Devesa et al.) published in 1999 by the National Institutes of Health suggests that there are elevated rates of brain and other nervous system cancer in the northwestern, north central, and southeastern parts of the country. Being descriptive in nature, the atlas does not evaluate whether observed patterns are simply due to random variation or if they are reflective of true geographical differences in disease risk or treatment practices. To formally test for geographical clustering of disease, we analyzed U.S. brain cancer mortality data from 1986 to 1995 with Tango's Excess Events test, the Cuzick-Edwards k-Nearest-Neighbors test,..