Liver and gallbladder are important origins for raising cancer and also common areas of metastasis from other sources. Liver cancer is among the highly lethal malignant neoplasm all around the world, and in both sexes. A four times increased rate is reported for liver cancer age standardized mortality rate in Iran from 1.18 deaths per 100,000 persons in 1990 to 5.66 in 2015. Golestan province, located in Northeast of Iran has a unique position on the Asian belt of upper gastrointestinal cancers. In this study we aimed to report the incidence rate of hepato-pancreato-biliary cancers during the 10 years establishment of the Golestan population-based cancer registry.

This cross-sectional study was conducted on data of hepato-biliary cancer cases obtained from the Golestan Population-based Based Cancer Registry (GPCR) during 10-years (2004-2013) in Golestan province. Age-Standardized Incidence Rates (ASR) per 100,000 person-year were calculated using CanReg5 software.

Overall, 568 cases of primary liver and biliary tract cancers were registered in the GPCR during the study period. They included 421 liver cancers and 147 cases of biliary tract cancers. More than half the cases were occurred in men. The ASR of liver and biliary tract cancers in men was 4.7 and 1.0 per 100000 person-year, respectively. The incidence rates of these cancers in women were 2.4 (liver), 1.6 (biliary tract). The ASRs of liver cancer changed from 10.02 and 3.97 in 2004 to 6.27 and 1.09 in 2013 in male and female, respectively. The ASRs of biliary tract cancer changed from 0.83 and 2.3 in 2004 to 1.32 and 2.07 in 2013 in male and female, respectively.

Liver cancer is more common among men and the biliary tract cancer among women. Environmental factors could be the reasons of the differences which are needed to be considered.