epidemiology of breast cancer in mazandaran province, 2009 - 2010

background and purpose: breast cancer is the most common malignancy and a leading cause of cancer deaths in women throughout the world. breast cancer is accounted for 16 percent of all cancers. this study was performed to investigate the epidemiology of breast cancer in mazandaran province. materials and methods: this longitudinal descriptive study included all cases with breast cancer recorded in health department of medicine in mazandaran and babol university of medical sciences between 2009 and 2010. the data was collected from public and private pathology centers which was classified according to the world health organization (who) international classification of diseases for oncology icd-o. spss ver.18 was used to analyze the data. results: we found 251 patients with breast cancer in 2009 and 237 cases in 2010. crude incidence rate of breast cancer among the women in mazandaran province was 17.45 and 16.32 per thousand in 2009 and 2010, respectively. the asr rates of breast cancer was 26.6and 24.9 per hundred thousand in the studied periods, respectively. most cases occurred in women aged 50-54 years (17%, annual rate). the most common type of breast cancer morphology in 2009 and 2010 was infiltrating ductal carcinoma. conclusion: the results showed similar incidence rate of breast cancer in mazandaran province to other provinces in iran. efficient approaches should be taken for cancer registry systems especially breast cancer. moreover, an appropriate structure with skilled specialists could have an important role in the discovery and recording of cases.