Avaliação epidemiológica do câncer de cabeça e pescoço no Brasil: mortalidade e fatores de risco regionais.

The objective of this study was to analyze the real situation of cases and deaths from head and neck cancer (HNC) and to evaluate practices and strategies to improve the population understanding of the main risk factors in Brazil. This was a retrospective descriptive quantitative study that analyzed data on mortality from the HNC in Brazil between 2014 and 2018, from the Atlas of Cancer Mortality. Analyses were carried out for sociodemographic variables, age groups, sex and death rates using the Average Annual Percent Change (AAPC) method and descriptive statistics. HNC death rate affecting men was 369.40% higher than in women. The most affected ages were in the group between 60 and 69 years for men and women (n = 14,159; 2,354), respectively. However, the mortality rate increased for women in recent years. Thus, it is possible to confirm that HNC in Brazil deserves public health attention and demands effective actions applied to the population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]